Abstract:
Emotional experiences often contain a multitude of details that may be represented in memory as individual elements or integrated into a single representation. How details associated with a negative emotional event are represented in memory can have important implications for extinction strategies designed to reduce emotional responses. For example, is extinguishing one cue associated with an aversive outcome sufficient to reduce learned behavior to other cues present at the time of learning that were not directly extinguished? Here, we used a between-subjects multi-day threat conditioning and extinction task to assess whether participants generalize extinction from one cue to unextinguished cues. On Day 1, one group of participants learned that a compound conditioned stimulus, composed of a tone and colored square, predicted an uncomfortable shock to the wrist (Compound group). A second group learned that the tone and square separately predicted shock (Separate group). On Day 2, participants in both groups were exposed to the tone in the absence of shocks (cue extinction). On Day 3, we tested whether extinction generalized from the extinguished to the unextinguished cue, as well as to a compound composed of both cues. Results showed that configural and elemental learning had unique and opposite effects on extinction generalization. Subjects who initially learned that a compound cue predicted shock successfully generalized extinction learning from the tone to the square, but exhibited threat relapse to the compound cue. In contrast, subjects who initially learned that each cue individually predicted shock did not generalize extinction learning from the tone to the square, but threat responses to the compound were low. These results highlight the importance of whether details of an aversive event are represented as integrated or separated memories, as these representations affect the success or limits of extinction generalization.
摘要:
情感体验通常包含许多细节,这些细节可以在内存中表示为单个元素或集成到单个表示中。与负面情绪事件相关的细节如何在记忆中表示,对于旨在减少情绪反应的灭绝策略具有重要意义。例如,熄灭与厌恶结果相关的一个线索是否足以将学习行为减少到学习时没有直接熄灭的其他线索?这里,我们使用受试者之间的多日威胁条件和灭绝任务来评估参与者是否将灭绝从一个线索推广到未熄灭的线索.在第1天,一组参与者了解到复合条件刺激,由色调和彩色正方形组成,预测手腕会出现不舒服的电击(化合物组)。第二组了解到音调和正方形分别预测了电击(单独组)。在第2天,两组参与者都在没有电击的情况下暴露于音调(线索消失)。在第3天,我们测试了灭绝是否从熄灭的线索推广到未熄灭的线索,以及由两种线索组成的化合物。结果表明,构形学习和元素学习对消光泛化有独特而相反的影响。最初了解到复合提示预测电击的受试者成功地从音调到正方形的广义灭绝学习,但对复合线索表现出威胁复发。相比之下,最初了解到每个提示单独预测电击的受试者并没有将灭绝学习从音调推广到正方形,但是对化合物的威胁反应很低。这些结果强调了厌恶事件的细节是否被表示为整合或分离的记忆的重要性。因为这些表示会影响灭绝推广的成功或极限。