Demographic factors predict magnitude of conditioned fear.
There is substantial variability across individuals in the magnitudes of their skin conductance (SC) responses during the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear. To manage this variability, subjects may be matched for demographic variables, such as age, gender and education. However, limited data exist addressing how much variability in conditioned SC responses is actually explained by these variables. The present study assessed the influence of age, gender and education on the SC responses of 222 subjects who underwent the same differential conditioning paradigm. The demographic variables were found to predict a small but significant amount of variability in conditioned responding during fear acquisition, but not fear extinction learning or extinction recall. A larger differential change in SC during acquisition was associated with more education. Older participants and women showed smaller differential SC during acquisition. Our findings support the need to consider age, gender and education when studying fear acquisition but not necessarily when examining fear extinction learning and recall. Variability in demographic factors across studies may partially explain the difficulty in reproducing some SC findings.
['Rosenbaum|Blake L|BL|', 'Bui|Eric|E|', 'Marin|Marie-France|MF|', 'Holt|Daphne J|DJ|', 'Lasko|Natasha B|NB|', 'Pitman|Roger K|RK|', 'Orr|Scott P|SP|', 'Milad|Mohammed R|MR|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D000367:Age Factors D000368:Aged D000704:Analysis of Variance D003193:Compulsive Personality Disorder D003214:Conditioning, Classical D003710:Demography D004522:Educational Status D005239:Fear D005260:Female D005712:Galvanic Skin Response D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D011237:Predictive Value of Tests D011594:Psychometrics D012044:Regression Analysis D012559:Schizophrenia D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic D055815:Young Adult
Demographics Skin conductance Extinction Education Classical conditioning Fear conditioning