The DOI matches its Crossref record; 93 of the 95 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
What's wrong with fear conditioning?
Open accessAbstract
Fear conditioning is one of the prime paradigms of behavioural neuroscience and a source of tremendous insight in the fundamentals of learning and memory and the psychology and neurobiology of emotion. It is also widely regarded as a model for the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders in a diathesis-stress model of psychopathology. Starting from the apparent paradox between the adaptive nature of fear conditioning and the dysfunctional nature of pathological anxiety, we present a critique of the human fear conditioning paradigm as an experimental model for psychopathology. We discuss the potential benefits of expanding the human fear conditioning paradigm by (1) including action tendencies as an important index of fear and (2) paying more attention to "weak" (i.e., ambiguous) rather than "strong" fear learning situations (Lissek et al., 2006), such as contained in selective learning procedures. We present preliminary data that illustrate these ideas and discuss the importance of response systems divergence in understanding individual differences in vulnerability for the development of pathological anxiety.
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“There is also relatively little evidence that known vulnerability factors for PTSD are related to dysfunctional fear-learning patterns in non-clinical populations [35].”
From Memory and Forgetting (2018) · cites this paper as [35]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Beckers, T., Krypotos, A.-M., Boddez, Y., Effting, M., & Kindt, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
- KU Leuven (BE)
- Corresponding author
- Beckers, Tom
- Venue
- Biological Psychology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-01
- Volume
- 92
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 90-96
- ISSN
- 0301-0511 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2149193362
- Cited by
- 272
- References
- 95
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 21 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 12
- FWCI
- 8.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Biological Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (publishedVersion)
- Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
- Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- fear conditioning, anxiety disorders, diathesis-stress model, action tendencies, learning and memory
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Anxiety Disorders, Catechol O-Methyltransferase, Conditioning, Psychological, Fear, Humans, Research
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