积极情绪对条件性恐惧泛化的抑制作用

恐惧的过度泛化是焦虑障碍的核心症状之一,表现为患者对与原危险刺激极不相似的安全刺激也产生恐惧反应。本研究采用经典条件恐惧范式,以US主观预期、回溯性恐惧评定、回溯性效价评定和皮电反应作为恐惧反应的指标,通过"最好自我"训练来诱发被试的积极情绪,考察了恐惧习得后的积极情绪对于恐惧泛化的影响。本研究发现,积极情绪能有效地抑制条件性恐惧的泛化,增强被试对安全信号的学习,并对消退后的恐惧重建现象起到预防作用。研究同时显示,恐惧泛化在主观评定指标和生理指标间出现了分离,这表明积极情绪对恐惧泛化的抑制作用是一个综合的过程,可能涉及到不同的作用机制。本研究结果提示可以通过诱发积极情绪,抑制条件性恐惧的泛化,对临床干预有一定的启发意义。

The inhibitive effect of positive emotions on fear generalization

Overgeneralization is one of core symptoms in anxiety disorders.Previous studies of fear generalization just focused on the factors that facilitate generalization.For example,plenty of studies from this field showed that negative emotions can promote the generalization of fear.However,few studies explored how to prevent generalization,and the role of positive emotions in preventing generalization of fear is unknown.In current study,we fill this gap by behaviorally assessing the role of positive emotions in fear-generalization.Fifty healthy participants underwent fear conditioning and generalization procedure.Skin-conductance response (SCR) and on-line expectancy were served as the measurement of fear responses.After fear acquisition stage,all participants were randomly divided into experimental group or control group that accepted "Best Possible Self'emotional manipulation or nothing.The level of positive emotions were measured by PANAS before and after the manipulation stage.Furthermore,participants were instructed to rate the level of subjective fear and emotion valence of conditioned stimuli (CS) at the end of each stage.The results showed that experimental group displayed less fear generalization than control group,as reflected by SCR,on-line expectancy and self-report.Noteworthily,we observed the separation of implicit measure (skin conductance response) and explicit measure (on-line expectancy and self-report) in this study.This separation supports the dual process theory,suggesting that positive emotion manipulation inhibit fear generalization through different pathways (excitatory pathway and inhibitory pathway) and different mechanisms.Our findings demonstrate that positive emotion manipulation can prevent fear generalization effectively.Given the basis of fear conditioning and generalization,our results may have clinical implications for future treatments and interventions in anxiety disorder.