Yu Kenny, Vanpaemel Wolf, Tuerlinckx Francis, Zaman Jonas
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
University of Hasselt, Hasselt, Belgium.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2024 Dec 19;9(1):78. doi: 10.1038/s41539-024-00287-x.
Perception and perceptual memory play crucial roles in fear generalization, yet their dynamic interaction remains understudied. This research (N = 80) explored their relationship through a classical differential conditioning experiment. Results revealed that while fear context perception fluctuates over time with a drift effect, perceptual memory remains stable, creating a disjunction between the two systems. Surprisingly, this disjunction does not significantly impact fear generalization behavior. Although most participants demonstrated generalization aligned with perceptual rather than physical stimulus distances, incorporating perceptual memory data into perceptual distance calculations did not enhance model performance. This suggests a potential shift in the mapping of the perceptual memory component of fear context, occurring alongside perceptual dynamics. Overall, this work provides evidence for understanding fear generalization behavior through different stimulus representational processes. Such mechanistic investigations can enhance our understanding of how individuals behave when facing threats and potentially aid in developing mechanism-specific diagnoses and treatments.
感知和感知记忆在恐惧泛化中起着关键作用，但其动态交互仍未得到充分研究。本研究（N = 80）通过经典的差异条件作用实验探讨了它们之间的关系。结果显示，虽然恐惧情境感知会随着时间波动并产生漂移效应，但感知记忆保持稳定，这在两个系统之间形成了脱节。令人惊讶的是，这种脱节并未对恐惧泛化行为产生显著影响。尽管大多数参与者表现出的泛化与感知距离而非物理刺激距离一致，但将感知记忆数据纳入感知距离计算并未提高模型性能。这表明恐惧情境的感知记忆成分的映射可能发生了潜在变化，与感知动态同时出现。总体而言，这项工作为通过不同的刺激表征过程理解恐惧泛化行为提供了证据。此类机制性研究可以增进我们对个体在面对威胁时行为方式的理解，并可能有助于开发针对特定机制的诊断和治疗方法。
