Using spatial mapping processes to discriminate between threat and safety is crucial for survival. Little is known why some fail to discriminate during contextual conditioning. We used a virtual reality (VR) contextual conditioning paradigm to elucidate the effects of state and trait anxiety on contextual threat learning. Participants (n = 70)…

Research is equivocal on whether attention orienting is atypical in autism. This study investigated two types of attention orienting in autistic people and accounted for the potential confounders of alerting level, co-occurring symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and anxiety, age, and sex. Twenty-seven autistic participants…

Generalization of fear can involve abnormal responding to cues that signal safety and is common in people diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Differential auditory fear conditioning can be used as a tool to measure changes in fear discrimination and generalization. Most prior work in this area has focused on elevated amygdala activity…

Individuals with anxiety disorders often do not respond to safety signals and hence continue to be afraid and anxious. Consequently, it is important to develop paradigms in animals that can directly study brain systems involved in learning about, and responding to, safety signals. We previously developed a discrimination procedure in rats of the…

The current study examined the impact of both the tendency to worry (trait worry) and the process of worry (state worry) on subsequent behavioral responding in a schedule discrimination learning task. High and low trait worriers were randomly assigned to a state worry or relaxation incubation condition and completed a test of executive functioning…

These findings suggest that a high density of negative feedback induces both reflective and impulsive children to make fewer errors than does positive feedback. (Authors)

The effects of the presence of an attachment object upon preschoolers' emotionality and discrimination performance in a novel learning situation were evaluated. Blanket-attached and blanket-nonattached children were assigned to one of three task conditions: (1) mother present, (2) blanket present, (3) no familiar object present. (Author/SB)

The rationale, planning and implementing of this research is discussed in terms of its three hypotheses: (1) that both self desensitization and in vivo desensitization would result in lower Fear Index and Anxiety Differential scores of counselor trainees just prior to communicating with a role playing client in a counseling room where they are…

The present study was aimed at simultaneously determining on the same subject, the effects of stress on retrieval of flexible (contextual or temporal) or stable (spatial) information. Three behavioral paradigms carried out in a four-hole board were designed as follows: (1) Simple Discrimination (SD), in which mice learned a single discrimination;…