TY - JOUR
T1 - Heightened false alarms of conditioned threat predict longitudinal increases in GAD and SAD symptoms over the first year of college
AU - Hunt, Christopher
AU - Fleig, Ryan
AU - Almy, Brandon
AU - Lissek, Shmuel
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors have no acknowledgments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - Lab-based fear-conditioning studies have repeatedly implicated exaggerated threat reactivity to benign (unreinforced) stimuli as concurrent markers of clinical anxiety, but little work has examined the strength of false alarms as a longitudinal predictor of anxiety problems. As such, we tested whether heightened false alarms of conditioned threat assessed in participants’ first semester of college predicted second-semester symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) – two anxiety conditions that are common in college students, have been associated with excessive false alarms, and have yet to be assessed with longitudinal conditioning designs. Here, we focused on the predictive effects of behavioral threat responses (threat expectancy, subjective anxiety, avoidance) given their greater potential for translation to the clinic. Results implicate conditioning-related increases in anxiety to safe stimuli resembling the danger-cue as prospective predictors of GAD. In contrast, SAD was predicted by non-specific elevations in anxiety to a broad set of safe stimuli, as well as by increased threat expectancy toward cues least resembling the conditioned danger cue. These findings suggest that risk for GAD and SAD are captured by distinct, behavioral indicators of false-alarms that may be more feasibly collected in clinical settings compared to alternative experimental anxiety measures like psychophysiological responses.
AB - Lab-based fear-conditioning studies have repeatedly implicated exaggerated threat reactivity to benign (unreinforced) stimuli as concurrent markers of clinical anxiety, but little work has examined the strength of false alarms as a longitudinal predictor of anxiety problems. As such, we tested whether heightened false alarms of conditioned threat assessed in participants’ first semester of college predicted second-semester symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) – two anxiety conditions that are common in college students, have been associated with excessive false alarms, and have yet to be assessed with longitudinal conditioning designs. Here, we focused on the predictive effects of behavioral threat responses (threat expectancy, subjective anxiety, avoidance) given their greater potential for translation to the clinic. Results implicate conditioning-related increases in anxiety to safe stimuli resembling the danger-cue as prospective predictors of GAD. In contrast, SAD was predicted by non-specific elevations in anxiety to a broad set of safe stimuli, as well as by increased threat expectancy toward cues least resembling the conditioned danger cue. These findings suggest that risk for GAD and SAD are captured by distinct, behavioral indicators of false-alarms that may be more feasibly collected in clinical settings compared to alternative experimental anxiety measures like psychophysiological responses.
KW - Fear conditioning
KW - Generalized Anxiety Disorder
KW - Longitudinal design
KW - Risk factors
KW - Social Anxiety Disorder
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U2 - 10.1016/j.janxdis.2022.102539
DO - 10.1016/j.janxdis.2022.102539
M3 - Article
C2 - 35134626
AN - SCOPUS:85124048926
SN - 0887-6185
VL - 87
JO - Journal of Anxiety Disorders
JF - Journal of Anxiety Disorders
M1 - 102539
ER -