Institute for Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, 610066, China.
Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyväskylä, Finland.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jul 9;11(1):14210. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-93544-7.
Previous research indicates that excessive fear is a critical feature in anxiety disorders; however, recent studies suggest that disgust may also contribute to the etiology and maintenance of some anxiety disorders. It remains unclear if differences exist between these two threat-related emotions in conditioning and generalization. Evaluating different patterns of fear and disgust learning would facilitate a deeper understanding of how anxiety disorders develop. In this study, 32 college students completed threat conditioning tasks, including conditioned stimuli paired with frightening or disgusting images. Fear and disgust were divided into two randomly ordered blocks to examine differences by recording subjective US expectancy ratings and eye movements in the conditioning and generalization process. During conditioning, differing US expectancy ratings (fear vs. disgust) were found only on CS-, which may demonstrated that fear is associated with inferior discrimination learning. During the generalization test, participants exhibited greater US expectancy ratings to fear-related GS1 (generalized stimulus) and GS2 relative to disgust GS1 and GS2. Fear led to longer reaction times than disgust in both phases, and the pupil size and fixation duration for fear stimuli were larger than for disgust stimuli, suggesting that disgust generalization has a steeper gradient than fear generalization. These findings provide preliminary evidence for differences between fear- and disgust-related stimuli in conditioning and generalization, and suggest insights into treatment for anxiety and other fear- or disgust-related disorders.
先前的研究表明，过度恐惧是焦虑障碍的一个关键特征；然而，最近的研究表明，厌恶感也可能导致一些焦虑障碍的病因和维持。目前尚不清楚这两种与威胁相关的情绪在条件作用和泛化中是否存在差异。评估恐惧和厌恶的不同学习模式将有助于更深入地了解焦虑障碍的发展方式。在这项研究中，32 名大学生完成了威胁条件作用任务，包括与恐惧或厌恶图像配对的条件刺激。恐惧和厌恶被分为两个随机顺序的块，通过记录条件作用和泛化过程中的主观 US 预期评分和眼球运动来检查差异。在条件作用过程中，仅在 CS-上发现了不同的 US 预期评分（恐惧与厌恶），这可能表明恐惧与较差的辨别学习有关。在泛化测试中，与厌恶 GS1 和 GS2 相比，参与者对与恐惧相关的 GS1 和 GS2 表现出更高的 US 预期评分。在两个阶段中，恐惧都导致了比厌恶更长的反应时间，并且对恐惧刺激的瞳孔大小和注视时间也大于对厌恶刺激的瞳孔大小和注视时间，这表明厌恶的泛化比恐惧的泛化具有更陡峭的梯度。这些发现为条件作用和泛化中恐惧和厌恶相关刺激之间的差异提供了初步证据，并为焦虑和其他与恐惧或厌恶相关的障碍的治疗提供了一些见解。
