Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Department of General Psychiatry and Psychotherapy with Outpatient Clinic, University Hospital of Tübingen, Germany.
Biol Psychol. 2024 Oct;192:108860. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2024.108860. Epub 2024 Sep 11.
Personality traits linked to internalizing disorders influence the way we develop fears, but also how we regain a sense of safety. In the present study, we investigated the effect of intolerance of uncertainty (IU) on defensive responses using a differential fear conditioning protocol with an extinction phase. The conditioned stimulus was associated with an aversive sound (90 dB) in 75 % of the presentations during acquisition. A final sample of 176 participants completed the experiment. We measured self-reports of associative (expectancy of the unconditioned stimulus in acquisition) and evaluative learning (arousal and valence), and both physiological (skin conductance response) and electrocortical responses (steady-state visually evoked potentials, ssVEPs; late positive potentials, LPP) to the conditioned stimuli. Our results show that IU's impact is limited, with no effect in both acquisition and extinction. These findings emphasize the necessity of large samples in research on inter-individual differences and contribute to our understanding of how IU may or may not be involved in fear and safety learning processes considering multiple aspects of fear responding.
人格特质与内化障碍有关，影响我们产生恐惧的方式，也影响我们重新获得安全感的方式。在本研究中，我们使用带有消退阶段的差异恐惧条件反射协议，研究了不确定性容忍度（IU）对防御反应的影响。在获得过程中，条件刺激与 90dB 的不愉快声音相关联，占 75%的呈现率。最终有 176 名参与者完成了实验。我们测量了关联学习（获得过程中对无条件刺激的预期）和评价学习（唤醒和效价）的自我报告，以及条件刺激的生理（皮肤电反应）和电皮质反应（稳态视觉诱发电位，ssVEP；晚期正电位，LPP）。我们的结果表明，IU 的影响是有限的，在获得和消退过程中都没有影响。这些发现强调了在个体差异研究中需要大样本的必要性，并有助于我们理解 IU 如何在考虑恐惧反应的多个方面时可能参与或不参与恐惧和安全学习过程。
