Anxiety patients overgeneralize fear responses, possibly because they cannot distinguish between cues never been associated with a threat (i.e., safe) and threat-associated cues. However, as contexts and not cues are discussed as the relevant triggers for prolonged anxiety responses characterizing many anxiety disorders, we speculated that it is rather overgeneralization of contextual anxiety, which constitutes a risk factor for anxiety disorders. To this end, we investigated generalization of conditioned contextual anxiety and explored modulatory effects of anxiety sensitivity, a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Fifty-five participants underwent context conditioning in a virtual reality paradigm. On Day 1 (acquisition), participants received unpredictable mildly painful electric stimuli (unconditioned stimulus, US) in one virtual office (anxiety context, CTX+), but never in a second office (safety context, CTX-). Successful acquisition of conditioned anxiety was indicated by aversive ratings and defensive physiological responses (i.e., SCR) to CTX+ vs CTX-. On Day 2 (generalization), participants re-visited both the anxiety and the safety contexts plus three generalization contexts (G-CTX), which were gradually dissimilar to CTX+ (from 75 to 25%). Generalization of conditioned anxiety was evident for ratings, but less clear for physiological responses. The observed dissociation between generalization of verbal and physiological responses suggests that these responses depend on two distinct context representations, likely elemental and contextual representations. Importantly, anxiety sensitivity was positively correlated with the generalization of reported contextual anxiety. Thus, this study demonstrates generalization gradients for conditioned contextual anxiety and that anxiety sensitivity facilitates such generalization processes suggesting the importance of generalization of contextual anxiety for the development of anxiety disorders.

中文翻译：

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条件性情境焦虑的概括和焦虑敏感性的调节作用。

焦虑症患者过度概括恐惧反应，可能是因为他们无法区分从未与威胁（即安全）相关的线索和与威胁相关的线索。然而，由于背景而不是线索被讨论为许多焦虑症特征的长期焦虑反应的相关触发因素，我们推测这是对背景焦虑的过度概括，而背景焦虑构成了焦虑症的危险因素。为此，我们研究了条件性情境焦虑的泛化，并探讨了焦虑敏感性（焦虑症的危险因素）的调节作用。五十五名参与者在虚拟现实范式中接受了情境调节。第一天（采集），参与者在一个虚拟办公室（焦虑环境，CTX+）中接受不可预测的轻度疼痛电刺激（无条件刺激，美国），但从未在第二个办公室（安全环境，CTX-）中接受。对 CTX+ 与 CTX- 的厌恶评级和防御性生理反应（即 SCR）表明条件性焦虑的成功获得。第 2 天（泛化），参与者重新审视焦虑和安全情境以及三个泛化情境 (G-CTX)，这些情境逐渐与 CTX+ 不同（从 75% 到 25%）。条件性焦虑的普遍化在评分方面很明显，但在生理反应方面则不太明显。观察到的言语反应和生理反应的概括之间的分离表明，这些反应取决于两种不同的情境表征，可能是基本表征和情境表征。重要的是，焦虑敏感性与所报告的情境焦虑的普遍化呈正相关。因此，这项研究证明了条件性情境焦虑的泛化梯度，并且焦虑敏感性促进了这种泛化过程，表明情境焦虑的泛化对于焦虑症发展的重要性。