Wake Shannon, Morriss Jayne, Johnstone Tom, van Reekum Carien M, Dodd Helen
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
Behav Res Ther. 2021 Apr;139:103818. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2021.103818. Epub 2021 Jan 31.
Extinction-resistant threat is regarded as a central hallmark of pathological anxiety. However, it remains relatively under-studied in social anxiety. Here we sought to determine whether self-reported trait social anxiety is associated with compromised threat extinction learning and retention. We tested this hypothesis within two separate, socially relevant conditioning studies. In the first experiment, a Selective Extinction Through Cognitive Evaluation (SECE) paradigm was used, which included a cognitive component during the extinction phase, while experiment 2 used a traditional threat extinction paradigm. Skin conductance responses and subjective ratings of anxiety (experiment 1 and 2) and expectancy (experiment 2) were collected across both experiments. The findings of both studies demonstrated no effect of social anxiety on extinction learning or retention. Instead, results from experiment 1 indicated that individual differences in Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) were associated with the ability to use contextual cues to decrease a conditioned response during SECE. However, during extinction retention, high IU predicted greater generalisation across context cues. Findings of experiment 2 revealed that higher IU was associated with impaired extinction learning and retention. The results from both studies suggest that compromised threat extinction is likely to be a characteristic of high levels of IU and not social anxiety.
抗消退威胁被视为病理性焦虑的核心特征。然而，在社交焦虑中对此的研究仍相对较少。在此，我们试图确定自我报告的特质社交焦虑是否与威胁消退学习和记忆受损有关。我们在两项独立的、与社会相关的条件作用研究中对这一假设进行了测试。在第一个实验中，使用了通过认知评估进行选择性消退（SECE）范式，该范式在消退阶段包含一个认知成分，而实验2使用了传统的威胁消退范式。在两个实验中均收集了皮肤电导率反应以及焦虑（实验1和2）和预期（实验2）的主观评分。两项研究的结果均表明社交焦虑对消退学习或记忆没有影响。相反，实验1的结果表明，不确定性不耐受（IU）的个体差异与在SECE期间利用情境线索减少条件反应的能力有关。然而，在消退记忆期间，高IU预示着跨情境线索的更强泛化。实验2的结果显示，较高的IU与消退学习和记忆受损有关。两项研究的结果均表明，威胁消退受损可能是高IU水平的特征，而非社交焦虑的特征。
