Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands; Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; Centre for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Biol Psychol. 2021 Jan;158:107994. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2020.107994. Epub 2020 Nov 25.
Recent research findings indicate that human fear conditioning is affected by instructions, particularly those concerning the contingency between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). However, whether or not such instructions were provided to participants often remains unsaid in fear conditioning studies. In the current study (N = 102), we investigated whether conditioned fear acquisition depends on CS-US contingency instructions. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group was instructed about the precise CS-US contingency before conditioning. The second group was instructed to discover the CS-US contingency. The third group did not receive any contingency instructions. We found facilitated fear acquisition (using skin conductance and startle) and increased contingency awareness in the first and second group compared to the third group. Furthermore, contingency reversal instructions immediately reversed conditioned responses. Based on these results, we advise to systematically report the contingency instructions used in fear conditioning research.
最近的研究结果表明，人类的恐惧条件作用受到指导的影响，特别是关于条件刺激 (CS) 和非条件刺激 (US) 之间的关联的指导。然而，在恐惧条件作用研究中，是否向参与者提供了此类指导通常没有说明。在本研究中（N=102），我们调查了条件性恐惧的获得是否取决于 CS-US 关联指导。参与者被随机分配到三个组之一。第一组在条件作用之前接受了关于 CS-US 关联的确切指导。第二组被指导去发现 CS-US 关联。第三组没有接受任何关联指导。我们发现，与第三组相比，第一组和第二组的恐惧获得（使用皮肤电导率和惊跳反应）得到促进，并且对关联的意识增强。此外，关联反转指导立即反转了条件反应。基于这些结果，我们建议系统地报告恐惧条件作用研究中使用的关联指导。
