Fear generalization is pivotal for the survival-promoting avoidance of potential danger, but, if too pronounced, it promotes pathological anxiety. Similar to adult patients with anxiety disorders, healthy children tend to show overgeneralized fear responses.
ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate neuro-developmental aspects of fear generalization in adolescence - a critical age for the development of anxiety disorders.
MethodsWe compared healthy adolescents (14-17 years) with healthy adults (19-34 years) regarding their fear responses towards tilted Gabor gratings (conditioned stimuli, CS) previously paired or remained unpaired with an aversive stimulus (unconditioned stimuli, US) and slightly differently tilted generalization stimuli (GS). Behavioral, peripheral and neural responses were captured by fear- and UCS expectancy ratings, a perceptual discrimination task, pupil dilation and source estimations of event-related magnetic fields.
ResultsClosely resembling adults, adolescents showed robust generalization gradients of fear ratings, pupil dilation, and estimated neural source activity. However, in the UCS expectancy ratings, adolescents revealed shallower generalization gradients indicating overgeneralization. Moreover, adolescents showed stronger visual cortical activity after as compared to before conditioning to all stimuli.
ConclusionVarious aspects of fear learning and generalization appear to be mature in healthy adolescents. Yet, cognitive aspects might show a slower course of development.
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