Fear conditioning, preparedness, and the contingent negative variation
- 1 May 1995
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in Psychophysiology
- Vol. 32 (3), 208-214
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1995.tb02950.x
Abstract
Psychophysiological research on preparedness has previously focused on autonomic nervous system parameters. The present study used electrocortical indices of fear conditioning. Subjects (n = 10) were tested under fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant conditions (1 week apart, order of conditions counterbalanced). Each condition comprised acquisition and extinction sessions. The contingent negative variation (CNV) was elicited in anticipation of forewarned slides (fear relevant: small animals; fear irrelevant: landscapes). In acquisition, reinforced conditioned stimulus (CS+) (but not nonreinforced conditioned stimulus [CS-]) slides were followed by white noise as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS). In extinction, the UCS was omitted. In the fear-relevant condition, CNV amplitude was significantly larger for CS+ than CS- in both acquisition and extinction. In the fear-relevant condition, CNV amplitude was significantly larger for CS+ than CS- in both acquisition and extinction. In the fear-irrelevant condition, CNV differentiation between CS+ and CS- was weak in both sessions. CNV was significantly larger in the fear-relevant than in the fear-irrelevant condition, for CS+ but not CS-. The findings are consistent with a preparedness interpretation and suggest that CNV under such circumstances may represent an automatic affective response to fear-relevant stimuli. Electrocortical measures could be particularly useful in examining information processing mechanisms in phobia and cognition-affect relationships generally.Keywords
This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
- Greater Resistance to Extinction of Electrodermal Responses Conditioned to Potentially Phobic CSs: A Noncognitive Process?Psychophysiology, 1986
- Preparedness and phobia: Effects of stimulus content on human visceral conditioning.Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1986
- The contingent negative variation (CNV) to fear-related stimuli in acquisition and extinctionInternational Journal of Psychophysiology, 1986
- Fear of animals: What is prepared?British Journal of Psychology, 1984
- The Effects of Directional Facial Cues on Electrodermal Conditioning to Facial StimuliPsychophysiology, 1983
- Data Acquisition in Neurophysiology a Flexible Microcomputer System for Recording Neurophysiological DataBritish Journal of Audiology, 1983
- Heart Rate, Contingent Negative Variation, and Evoked Potentials during Anticipation of Affective StimulationPsychophysiology, 1980
- An inventory for the measurement of self‐reported stress and arousalBritish Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 1978
- Electrodermal conditioning to potentially phobic stimuli in male and female subjectsBiological Psychology, 1976
- Relation of cue to consequence in avoidance learningPsychonomic Science, 1966