Threat learning in adults: the role of childhood maltreatment

Individual differences are thought to underlie how someone reacts to threat, some people tend to fight-or flight, others tend to freeze. These reactions to threat are often measured by looking at the autonomic nervous system response in a threat conditioning paradigm. There has been a focus in the literature on the sympathetic reaction, but now the importance of also looking at the parasympathetic responses has become more evident, especially with regard to resilience in developing anxiety-related psychopathology. Childhood maltreatment is likely to be an individual factor that can influence threat conditioning. In this study we used a large sample size (n=174) in which we included both sympathetic (skin conductance responses) and dominantly parasympathetic (heart rate) measures in a threat conditioning paradigm to test whether threat learning can be reflected in both branches of the autonomic nervous system. We also aimed to replicate the findings of Jaswetz et al., (2023) with...Show moreIndividual differences are thought to underlie how someone reacts to threat, some people tend to fight-or flight, others tend to freeze. These reactions to threat are often measured by looking at the autonomic nervous system response in a threat conditioning paradigm. There has been a focus in the literature on the sympathetic reaction, but now the importance of also looking at the parasympathetic responses has become more evident, especially with regard to resilience in developing anxiety-related psychopathology. Childhood maltreatment is likely to be an individual factor that can influence threat conditioning. In this study we used a large sample size (n=174) in which we included both sympathetic (skin conductance responses) and dominantly parasympathetic (heart rate) measures in a threat conditioning paradigm to test whether threat learning can be reflected in both branches of the autonomic nervous system. We also aimed to replicate the findings of Jaswetz et al., (2023) with regard to the coherence of these two branches. Additionally, we investigated the possible influence of childhood maltreatment on sympathetic and parasympathetic reactions within the same threat conditioning paradigm. Indeed, we found that threat learning is successful on parasympathetic measures. We were not able to replicate the findings of Jaswetz et al., (2023) in which a possible pattern of the sympathetic and parasympathetic responses was found. Furthermore, our results suggest that more severe childhood maltreatment does not affect responses in a threat conditioning paradigm, neither on sympathetic nor parasympathetic measures. In conclusion we can say that our study sheds new light on the influence of childhood maltreatment in threat learning since our results suggest that threat learning is not affected by prior experiences of childhood maltreatment when tested in a large sample size.Show less

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Threat learning in adults: the role of childhood maltreatment