Behavioural avoidance to imagined conditioned stimuli in differential fear conditioning

The underlying mechanisms of how a fear is born in our imagination is presently unclear. The current study used differential fear conditioning to assess how a fear is created in one's mind and how behavioural avoidance interacts with imagined fear. This study contained an Acquisition, Behavioural Avoidance, and Transfer phase. During the Acquisition phase, participants combined instructions such that whether they heard "imagine yellow" (colour instruction) or "imagine horizontal" (orientation instruction) they were to imagine yellow horizontal lines (CS+) and likewise for the "imagine blue" and "imagine vertical" instructions (CS-). Unbeknownst to participants, they only received the mild shock (US) to the orientation instructions. This manipulation allowed for a disambiguation of descriptive and depictive elements of how imagination interacts with fear. Next, participants completed the Behavioural Avoidance phase, whereby participants had the option to avoid the US after hearing the trial's instructions. Finally, in the Transfer phase, participants were visually shown the CS+ and CS- to determine how their fear transferred from imagery to perception. Self-report, skin conductance response (SCR), and behavioural avoidance attempts were used as dependent measures. Results from each phase and dependent measure suggested that fear was driven by the orientation instructions. Furthermore, fear was shown to transfer from imagery to the corresponding visual stimuli. In this way, these results suggest that both depictive and descriptive elements are involved in the creation of fears in our imagination.