Attentional Control Moderates the Association Between Combat Trauma Exposure and Fear Conditioning Among...

Traumatic events are common, yet only a small subset of trauma-exposed individuals go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This raises important questions about the psychological consequences of trauma and the individual differences that confer risk for maladaptive threat responding. Excessive acquisition and attenuated extinction of conditioned fear are implicated in the etiology of PTSD. However, the direct relation between trauma exposure and altered fear conditioning processes remains unclear. Further, attentional control (AC), or the executive capacity to regulate one's attention, might influence fear learning processes by modulating the extent to which one's attention is drawn to threats. The present study investigated if AC moderated the link between combat trauma exposure and maladaptive fear learning in a combat-exposed sample of veterans (n = 114). We found that AC significantly moderated the link between combat trauma exposure and fear acquisition, but not extinction. Specifically, for veterans low in AC, there was a stronger association between combat trauma exposure and expectancies of the unconditioned stimulus (i.e., a scream) in response to the reinforced conditioned stimulus (CS+). Further, strong AC was found to buffer against excessively fearful emotional responding, with high levels of AC corresponding to a negative relation between combat trauma exposure and anxiety experienced in response to the CS+. This pattern of results was observed even when controlling for responses to the CS- and symptoms of PTSD. The present findings point to AC as an important determinant of maladaptive threat responding in the wake of combat trauma.