An alternative route to widespread fears: the effects of fear learning on perceptual discrimination

Our fears do not remain specific but tend to spread across stimuli and situations, making fear generalization a key transdiagnostic mechanism underlying multiple disorders. Our recent finding that generalized fears were associated with failures in perceptual discrimination between novel, unthreatening stimuli and threat-associated stimuli has drastically challenged existing conceptions. Combined with research showing the malleability of perceptual discrimination by associative learning, our work suggests an alternative perceptual route via which widespread fears may emerge. Although the theoretical implications of these findings for generalization theories are starting to be acknowledged, systematic and translational research is needed. In a series of experimental studies, we will: (1) investigate immediate and long-term changes in discrimination acuity solely due to fear learning; (2) study the impact of the interplay between fear and safety learning (i.e., differential learning) on (asymmetric) changes in discrimination acuity; and (3) translate for the first time findings from animal research that demonstrated the moderating role of stimulus similarity between safety and fear cues on changes in perceptual discrimination to humans. This project has the potential to increase our understanding of post-learning behaviors, especially as it opens up entirely new perspectives within the field of fear generalization.