Soares J J, Ohman A
Department of Clinical Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Psychophysiology. 1993 Sep;30(5):460-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1993.tb02069.x.
The present study examined two issues. Are skin conductance responses conditioned to fear-relevant stimuli, as contrasted with responses conditioned to fear-irrelevant stimuli, elicited after merely an automatic, nonconscious analysis of the stimulus content? Do fearful subjects show better conditioning to nonfeared but fear-relevant stimuli (e.g., conditioning to spiders in snake-fearing subjects) than do nonfearful subjects? Subjects afraid of snakes, but not of spiders, or vice versa (n = 32) and nonfearful subjects (n = 32) were shown either fear-relevant stimuli (snakes or spiders and rats) or fear-irrelevant stimuli (flowers and mushrooms) in a differential conditioning paradigm, where one of the stimuli was followed by an electric shock. During a subsequent extinction phase, the conditioned stimuli were presented under backward masking conditions, preventing their conscious recognition. Consistent with our hypothesis, during the masked extinction of the conditioned stimuli, differential skin conductance responses to conditioning and control stimuli remained only for subjects conditioned to fear-relevant stimuli. Both fearful and nonfearful control subjects had significantly larger differential electrodermal responses to fear-relevant than to fear-irrelevant stimuli. However, contrary to our hypothesis, fearful subjects did not show enhanced conditionability to their nonfeared but fear-relevant stimuli as compared with nonfearful control subjects.
本研究探讨了两个问题。与仅对与恐惧无关的刺激进行条件反射的反应相比，对与恐惧相关的刺激进行条件反射的皮肤电传导反应是否仅在对刺激内容进行自动的、无意识的分析后才引发？与不恐惧的受试者相比，恐惧的受试者对未恐惧但与恐惧相关的刺激（例如，怕蛇的受试者对蜘蛛进行条件反射）是否表现出更好的条件反射？在差异条件反射范式中，向32名怕蛇但不怕蜘蛛或反之的受试者以及32名不恐惧的受试者展示与恐惧相关的刺激（蛇或蜘蛛和大鼠）或与恐惧无关的刺激（花和蘑菇），其中一种刺激之后会施加电击。在随后的消退阶段，在逆向掩蔽条件下呈现条件刺激，以防止对其进行有意识的识别。与我们的假设一致，在条件刺激的掩蔽消退期间，仅对与恐惧相关的刺激进行条件反射的受试者对条件刺激和对照刺激仍存在差异皮肤电传导反应。恐惧和不恐惧的对照受试者对与恐惧相关的刺激的差异皮肤电反应均显著大于对与恐惧无关的刺激的反应。然而，与我们的假设相反，与不恐惧的对照受试者相比，恐惧的受试者对其未恐惧但与恐惧相关的刺激并未表现出更强的心物感应能力。
