@article{ref1,
title="The influence of state anxiety on fear discrimination and extinction in females",
journal="Frontiers in psychology",
year="2017",
author="Dibbets, Pauline and Evers, Elisabeth A. T.",
volume="8",
number="",
pages="e347-e347",
abstract="Formal theories have linked pathological anxiety to a failure in fear response inhibition. Previously, we showed that aberrant response inhibition is not restricted to anxiety patients, but can also be observed in anxiety-prone adults. However, less is known about the influence of currently experienced levels of anxiety on inhibitory learning. The topic is highly important as state anxiety has a debilitating effect on cognition, emotion, and physiology and is linked to several anxiety disorders. In the present study, healthy female volunteers performed a fear conditioning task, after being informed that they will have to perform the Trier Social Stress Test task (n = 25; experimental group) or a control task (n = 25; control group) upon completion of the conditioning task. The results showed that higher levels of state anxiety corresponded with a reduced discrimination between a stimulus (CS+) typically followed by an aversive event and a stimulus (CS-) that is never followed by an aversive event both during the acquisition and the extinction phase. No effect of state anxiety on the skin conductance response associated with CS+ and CS- was found. Additionally, higher levels of state anxiety coincided with more negative valence ratings of the CSs. The results suggest that increased stress-induced state anxiety might lead to stimulus generalization during fear acquisition, thereby impairing associative learning.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1664-1078",
doi="10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00347",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00347"
}