Learning to not respond rather than not learning to respond: behavioral, neurological and clinical tests of a novel theory of selective conditioning.

Fear learning identifies danger signals and allows to prepare for threatening events. Pavlovian conditioning studies show that fear develops preferentially to highly predictive signals, and much less to nonreliable or redundant predictors (even if they have sometimes preceded the event). This selectivity lies at the heart of a whole generation of conditioning theories that maintain that nothing is learned about redundant stimuli. However, independent studies are starting to suggest that fear of redundant stimuli can emerge under specific testing conditions. We propose that learning always occurs to all stimuli, but that fear of redundant stimuli is suppressed to prevent over-responding with fear (which is costly). Selective conditioning relies on a selective inhibition mechanism, rarther than a selective learning mechanism. The project is designed to test important implications of this hypothesis: (1) redundant stimuli will elicit fear if the inhibition mechanism is de-activated at test, (2) redundant stimuli will elicit specific brain activity patterns that reflect the inhibition mechanism, and (3) high-anxious individuals will show more fear to redundant stimuli to the extent that they are generally impaired in fear inhibition. The experiments and predictions will be inspired largely by research on fear extinction, the best studied fear inhibition mechanism.

Keywords:Inhibition, Blocking, Associative learning, Pavlovian conditioning, Fear conditioning, Anxiety

Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, General psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences