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Reappraisal of Threat Value: Loss of Blocking in Human Aversive Conditioning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2013

Yannick Boddez ,
Frank Baeyens ,
Dirk Hermans  and
Tom Beckers
Yannick Boddez
Affiliation:
KU Leuven (Belgium)
Frank Baeyens
Affiliation:
KU Leuven (Belgium)
Dirk Hermans
Affiliation:
KU Leuven (Belgium)
Tom Beckers*
Affiliation:
KU Leuven (Belgium)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tom Beckers. Department of Psychology. KU Leuven. Tiensestraat 102 box 3712, 3000 Leuven (Belgium). E-mail: tom.beckers@ppw.kuleuven.be
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Abstract

Non-specificity of fear is a core aspect of what makes anxiety disorders so impairing: Fear does not remain specific to a single stimulus paired with danger, but generalizes to a broad set of stimuli, resulting in a snowballing of threat signals. The blocking procedure can provide a valuable laboratory model for gaining insight into such threat appraisal and generalization processes. We report two experiments in which we induced selective threat appraisal by using a blocking procedure in human aversive conditioning. We subsequently assessed to what extent such selective threat appraisal is sensitive to different kinds of interference. Results illustrate that the maintenance of selective threat appraisal is not guaranteed: Stimuli present during an aversive conditioning event that are initially tagged with a low threat value, can come to be tagged with a higher threat value later on, without additional experience with these stimuli. We argue that such interference in selective threat appraisal might be one of the mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of non-specific fear.

Keywords

stimulus competitionblockingretrospective revaluationgeneralizationanxiety disorders
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 16 , 2013 , E84
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2013 

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Footnotes

The research reported in this paper was supported by Grants GOA/2007/03 and PF/10/005 of KU Leuven. Tom Beckers is supported by Innovation Scheme (Vidi) Grant 452–09–001 of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Yannick Boddez, Frank Baeyens and Dirk Hermans are affiliated with the Department of Psychology, KU Leuven. Tom Beckers is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, KU Leuven and the Department of Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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