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Extinction in fear conditioning: Effects on startle modulation and evaluative self‐reports
Author(s) -
Vansteenwegen Debora,
Crombez Geert,
Baeyens Frank,
Eelen Paul
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/1469-8986.3560729
Subject(s) - psychology , conditioning , fear conditioning , classical conditioning , stimulus (psychology) , moro reflex , valence (chemistry) , extinction (optical mineralogy) , fear potentiated startle , skin conductance , audiology , neutral stimulus , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , stimulus control , reflex , amygdala , physics , optics , medicine , nicotine , statistics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , biomedical engineering
A basic feature of human evaluative conditioning is that the reported acquired valence of a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) that has been paired with a valenced unconditioned stimulus (US), is resistant to extinction. The present study investigated whether startle modulation, sometimes presented as an index of acquired valence, reflected this basic feature. In a differential fear conditioning paradigm ( n = 38) with an electrocutaneous stimulus as the US, a strong extinction manipulation was conducted by removing the US‐electrodes and by extended extinction trials. At the end of extinction, the results corroborated previous findings of evaluative conditioning in that the reported valence for CS+ was still more negative than for CS−, despite disappearance of the differential skin conductance responses. However, startle modulation did not show resistance‐to‐extinction. Results were discussed in terms of recent conceptualizations of extinction.