safe from harm learned, instructed, and symbolic generalization pathways of human threat-avoidance免受伤害,指示,象征人类threat-avoidance的推广途径.pdfVIP

Safe From Harm: Learned, Instructed, and Symbolic Generalization Pathways of Human Threat-Avoidance 1 2,3,4 5 6 1 Simon Dymond *, Michael W. Schlund , Bryan Roche , Jan De Houwer , Gary P. Freegard 1 Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom, 2 Department of Behavioral Psychology, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, 3 Department of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, 4 Department of Behavior Analysis, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, United States of America, 5 Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland, 6 Department of Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Abstract Avoidance of threatening or unpleasant events is usually an adaptive behavioural strategy. Sometimes, however, avoidance can become chronic and lead to impaired daily functioning. Excessive threat-avoidance is a central diagnostic feature of anxiety disorders, yet little is known about whether avoidance acquired in the absence of a direct history of conditioning with a fearful event differs from directly learned avoidance. In the present study, we tested whether avoidance acquired indirectly via verbal instructions and symbolic generalization result in similar levels of avoidance behaviour and threat- beliefs to avoidance acquired after direct learning. Following fear conditioning in which one conditioned stimulus was paired with shock (CS+) and another was not (CS 2), participants either learned or were instructed to make a response that cancelled impending shock. Three groups were then tested with a learned CS+ and CS2 (learne