Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, UK; Department of Psychology, Swansea University, UK.
Department of Psychology, Swansea University, UK.
Biol Psychol. 2021 Mar;160:108042. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108042. Epub 2021 Feb 11.
Threat generalization to novel instances is central to adaptive behavior. Most previous work has investigated threat generalization based on the perceptual similarity between past and novel stimuli. Few studies have explored generalization based on abstract, non-perceptual relations despite their importance for cognitive flexibility. In order to measure such rule-based generalization of threat without perceptual similarity, we developed a novel paradigm that prevents perceptual features from gaining predictive value. Our results demonstrate that participants responded according to the correct abstract rule and used it to successfully generalize their anticipatory behavioral threat responses (expectancy ratings, sudomotor nerve activity, and heart rate responses). Our results further show that participants flexibly adapted their responses to an unsignaled mid-session contingency reversal. We interpret our results in the context of other rule-based generalization tasks and argue that variations of our paradigm make possible a wide range of investigations into the conceptual aspects of threat generalization.
威胁泛化到新的实例是适应性行为的核心。大多数先前的研究都基于过去和新刺激之间的感知相似性来研究威胁泛化。尽管对于认知灵活性很重要，但很少有研究探索基于抽象的非感知关系的泛化。为了在没有感知相似性的情况下测量基于规则的威胁泛化，我们开发了一种新的范式，该范式可防止感知特征获得预测值。我们的结果表明，参与者根据正确的抽象规则做出反应，并使用该规则成功地将其预期的行为威胁反应（期望评分，汗腺神经活动和心率反应）进行泛化。我们的结果还表明，参与者灵活地适应了对未发出的中期会话条件逆转的反应。我们根据其他基于规则的泛化任务的背景来解释我们的结果，并认为我们的范例的变化使对威胁泛化的概念方面进行广泛研究成为可能。
