Generalization of extinguished skin conductance responding in human fear conditioning

In a human fear conditioning paradigm using the skin conductance response (SCR), participants were assigned to two groups. Following identical acquisition, group ABA (n = 16) was extinguished to a generalization stimulus (GS), whereas group AAB (n = 20) was extinguished to the conditioned stimulus (CS). At test, presenting the CS in group ABA yielded a strongly recovered SCR. Presenting the GS in group AAB, on the other hand, did not disrupt the effects of extinction. We conclude that extinguishing the CS (group AAB) is an efficient strategy to overcome the stimulus specificity of extinction observed otherwise (group ABA). Clinical implications are discussed.