Nothing is safe: intolerance of uncertainty is associated with compromised fear extinction learning

Extinction-resistant fear is considered to be a central feature of pathological anxiety. Here we sought to determine if individual differences in Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), a potential risk factor for anxiety disorders, underlies compromised fear extinction. We tested this hypothesis by recording electrodermal activity in 38 healthy participants during fear acquisition and extinction. We assessed the temporality of fear extinction, by examining early and late extinction learning. During early extinction, low IU was associated with larger skin conductance responses to learned threat vs. safety cues, whereas high IU was associated with skin conductance responding to both threat and safety cues, but no cue discrimination. During late extinction, low IU showed no difference in skin conductance between learned threat and safety cues, whilst high IU predicted continued fear expression to learned threat, indexed by larger skin conductance to threat vs. safety cues. These findings suggest a critical role of uncertainty-based mechanisms in the maintenance of learned fear.

An interfering Go/No-go task does not affect accuracy in a Concealed Information Test

Following the idea that response inhibition processes play a central role in concealing information, the present study investigated the influence of a Go/No-go task as an interfering mental activity, performed parallel to the Concealed Information Test (CIT), on the detectability of concealed information. 40 undergraduate students participated in a mock-crime experiment and simultaneously performed a CIT and a Go/No-go task. Electrodermal activity (EDA), respiration line length (RLL), heart rate (HR) and finger pulse waveform length (FPWL) were registered. Reaction times were recorded as behavioral measures in the Go/No-go task as well as in the CIT. As a within-subject control condition, the CIT was also applied without an additional task. The parallel task did not influence the mean differences of the physiological measures of the mock-crime-related probe and the irrelevant items. This finding might possibly be due to the fact that the applied parallel task induced a tonic rather than a phasic mental activity, which did not influence differential responding to CIT items. No physiological evidence for an interaction between the parallel task and sub-processes of deception (e.g. inhibition) was found. Subjects' performance in the Go/No-go parallel task did not contribute to the detection of concealed information. Generalizability needs further investigations of different variations of the parallel task.

Physiologische Grundlagen von prospektivem Gedächtnis: Von elektrodermaler Aktivität zu elektroenzephalen Signaturen

Prospektives Gedächtnis bezeichnet die Fähigkeit eine Absicht zu formulieren, diese zu behalten und sich wie geplant bei einer angemessenen Gelegenheit daran zu erinnern. Prospektive Gedächtnisaufgaben unterscheiden sich darin, ob sie nur einmal ausgeführt werden (z.B. einen Brief bei der Post einzuwerfen; episodische Aufgabe) oder ob sie immer wieder ausgeführt werden (jeweils nach dem Frühstück ein Medikament einnehmen; habituelle Aufgabe). Während im Alltag episodische Aufgaben häufig vorkommen, werden in Laborstudien oft mehrere Abrufhinweise verwendet (z.B. immer wenn ein bestimmtes Wort vorkommt, eine bestimmte Taste drücken). In diesem Beitrag thematisiere ich Messmethoden zur Erfassung von episodischem und habituellem prospektiven Gedächtnis, präsentiere Ergebnisse aus der eigenen Forschung mit EDA („electrodermal activity“) und ERP („event-related potentials“) und diskutiere ihre Relevanz zum Verständnis der neurokognitiven Mechanismen und der Messung individueller Unterschiede.