Threats Influence Fear-Potentiated Startle (FPS)
Two articles are looked at in this paper. One article is about how different cognitive loads and amount of attention to threats influence fear-potentiated startle. Another article about how social contact promotes health and well-being. A description of the studies conducted will be explained, along with the results of the study.
The purpose of this article was to examine how fear-potentiated startle (FPS) is affected by different levels of trait anxiety, focus of attention, and cognitive load. Fear potentiated startle is the reflexive reaction to stimuli, which, in this study, are threat cues. Researchers hypothesized that FPS would be reduced with a high cognitive load compared to low cognitive loads. They also hypothesized that different …show more content…
levels of trait anxiety would be observed in high and low cognitive loads, but not threat-focused cognitive loads.
This study was an experimental design involving 39 right-handed undergraduates that were split evenly into two groups (high anxiety and low anxiety) by the Welsh Anxiety Scale. The independent variables of this experiment were the high-load alternative set condition (HL/AS), the low load alternative set condition (LS/AS), and the threat focus condition (TF). The HL/AS condition was where the participants were instructed to focus their attention on information that was irrelevant to the threat as well as the high cognitive load given. The LL/AS condition was where the participants also focused their attention on information that was irrelevant to the threat, but did not receive anything that required the use of their working memory. The TF condition was where the participants only focused on the threat cues shown. The dependent variable of this experiment was the amount of anxiety the participants reported at the end of the study.
In this study, participants were shown a series of letter that were either upper or lower case and red or green. The letters were shown for 500 milliseconds. If a red letter was shown, the participant would receive an electric shock for 200 milliseconds on the right hand. If the letter was green, no shock would be administered. In the TF condition, participants were shown two buttons and were instructed to press one of the two buttons, depending on what the color of the letter was. To make the task to go faster and keep the participants motivated, researchers told the participants that speed and accuracy of pushing the button would influence the amount of shocks that they would receive. In the LL/AS condition, participants were instructed to press one of the two buttons, depending on if the letter was upper or lower case. In the HL/AS condition, participants were instructed to press one of two buttons, depending on if the letter was the same letter that was shown a couple of letters back. In both the LL/AS and HL/AS conditions, participants were told that the speed and accuracy would influence if they would receive a reward. There were six different blocks in this study with 50 trials each. The first and second block used the TF condition, the third and fourth block used the LL/AS condition, and the fifth and sixth block used the HL/AS condition. Throughout all the conditions, participants were startled with a white noise sound. Each block has 8 noises each, with a total of 48 noises altogether. There was an average of 27 seconds between each startling noise. At the end of the study, researchers gave participants an electronic questionnaire that measured their anxiety.
Researchers found that there was a main effect of condition, meaning that FPS was reduced.
FPS was significantly lower with the HL/AS condition followed by the LL/AS and TF condition, respectively. There was no significant effect of trait anxiety in the TF and HL/AS condition. Overall, there was no main effect or significant interaction with any of the conditions. In both high and low anxiety traits, FPS for each condition was about the …show more content…
same.
The authors conclude that FPS is reduced when an individual is not focusing on threats and has something else to think about. With the high cognitive load condition, participants had the lowest FPS every time. The authors also conclude that FPS was much higher for both high and low anxiety participants while in the LL/AS condition.
The purpose of this article was to examine how social contact impacted an individual’s health. In this study, researchers tested the effects of hand holding. The main hypothesis in this study was that an individual’s neural threat response would be reduce if they were holding hands with their spouse. This study had an experimental design because researchers used participants to see how different treatment conditions affected an individual. This study looked at 16 married couple to experiment on. The wives were tested with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, whereas the husbands only answered questionnaires and were used for hand-holding.
The independent variables in this experiment was the three different types of hand holding conditions. There was holding hands with the spouse, holding hands with a stranger, and then not holding hands with anyone. The dependent variable in this experiment was how the wives rated their feelings of unpleasantness (valence) and agitation (arousal) on a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale. The SAM scale is a 5-point scale that has pictures of a person, ranging from experiencing little unpleasantness to experiencing a lot of unpleasantness. Another dependent variable was the amount of neural activity in the brain there was. This study lasted for two weeks. In those two weeks, participants had two visits that were separated by one week. In the first visit, the couples were asked to complete questionnaires about the quality of their marriage and their personalities. The couples also experienced a mock scan during the first week to familiarize themselves with how the equipment worked. They experienced a mock fMRI scan and practiced pushing a button box that would be used in the experiment. Although electric shocks are a part of the study, participants did not experience these shocks until the second visit. One week later after completing questionnaires and familiarizing themselves with the equipment, the second visit occurred. In this visit, the wives completed a fMRI safety
assessment and were delivered an electric shock on their left and right ankles. The wives also took a fMRI scan before the experiment to act as the control group. This experiment involved 3 separate test trials, known as “blocks”. The first block use the first condition, which was holding hands with the spouse, the second block was holding hands with a stranger and the third block was not handing hands with anyone. The participants experienced a total of 12 threat cues and 12 safety cues in each block. The threat cues were when a red “X” appeared on a black background. This meant that the wife had a 20% chance of being shocked in the ankle. The safety cues were when a blue “O” appeared on a black background. This meant that the wife was not going to be shocked. After the threat or safety cue lasted for one second, there was an anticipation period that lasted between 4 to 10 seconds. At the end of the anticipation period, the participant would be shocked for one second if there was a threat cue. The participant then had 4 to 10 seconds of rest before using a button box to rate their feelings on the 5-point SAM scale. The participants received a total of 2 shocks per block. Researchers found main effects in both valence and arousal. With spousal hand holding, there was a lower rating of unpleasantness compared to a holding hands with a stranger and not holding hands at all. There were also significant main effects in the results of hand holding and neural threat responses. There was a lower neural activation with spousal hand holding compared to with a stranger or no one. The authors of this study concluded that spousal hand-holding decreases an individual’s response to threatening stimuli. As seen in the study and supported by the results, when spouses were holding hands, they did not have as intense feelings of unpleasantness when the shock was administered. The authors concluded that marital quality also had an impact on neural activity. A great relationship results in better regulation of the brain’s stress response and pain processing.
The purpose of this article was to examine how fear-potentiated startle (FPS) is affected by different levels of trait anxiety, focus of attention, and cognitive load. Fear potentiated startle is the reflexive reaction to stimuli, which, in this study, are threat cues. Researchers hypothesized that FPS would be reduced with a high cognitive load compared to low cognitive loads. They also hypothesized that different …show more content…
levels of trait anxiety would be observed in high and low cognitive loads, but not threat-focused cognitive loads.
This study was an experimental design involving 39 right-handed undergraduates that were split evenly into two groups (high anxiety and low anxiety) by the Welsh Anxiety Scale. The independent variables of this experiment were the high-load alternative set condition (HL/AS), the low load alternative set condition (LS/AS), and the threat focus condition (TF). The HL/AS condition was where the participants were instructed to focus their attention on information that was irrelevant to the threat as well as the high cognitive load given. The LL/AS condition was where the participants also focused their attention on information that was irrelevant to the threat, but did not receive anything that required the use of their working memory. The TF condition was where the participants only focused on the threat cues shown. The dependent variable of this experiment was the amount of anxiety the participants reported at the end of the study.
In this study, participants were shown a series of letter that were either upper or lower case and red or green. The letters were shown for 500 milliseconds. If a red letter was shown, the participant would receive an electric shock for 200 milliseconds on the right hand. If the letter was green, no shock would be administered. In the TF condition, participants were shown two buttons and were instructed to press one of the two buttons, depending on what the color of the letter was. To make the task to go faster and keep the participants motivated, researchers told the participants that speed and accuracy of pushing the button would influence the amount of shocks that they would receive. In the LL/AS condition, participants were instructed to press one of the two buttons, depending on if the letter was upper or lower case. In the HL/AS condition, participants were instructed to press one of two buttons, depending on if the letter was the same letter that was shown a couple of letters back. In both the LL/AS and HL/AS conditions, participants were told that the speed and accuracy would influence if they would receive a reward. There were six different blocks in this study with 50 trials each. The first and second block used the TF condition, the third and fourth block used the LL/AS condition, and the fifth and sixth block used the HL/AS condition. Throughout all the conditions, participants were startled with a white noise sound. Each block has 8 noises each, with a total of 48 noises altogether. There was an average of 27 seconds between each startling noise. At the end of the study, researchers gave participants an electronic questionnaire that measured their anxiety.
Researchers found that there was a main effect of condition, meaning that FPS was reduced.
FPS was significantly lower with the HL/AS condition followed by the LL/AS and TF condition, respectively. There was no significant effect of trait anxiety in the TF and HL/AS condition. Overall, there was no main effect or significant interaction with any of the conditions. In both high and low anxiety traits, FPS for each condition was about the …show more content…
same.
The authors conclude that FPS is reduced when an individual is not focusing on threats and has something else to think about. With the high cognitive load condition, participants had the lowest FPS every time. The authors also conclude that FPS was much higher for both high and low anxiety participants while in the LL/AS condition.
The purpose of this article was to examine how social contact impacted an individual’s health. In this study, researchers tested the effects of hand holding. The main hypothesis in this study was that an individual’s neural threat response would be reduce if they were holding hands with their spouse. This study had an experimental design because researchers used participants to see how different treatment conditions affected an individual. This study looked at 16 married couple to experiment on. The wives were tested with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, whereas the husbands only answered questionnaires and were used for hand-holding.
The independent variables in this experiment was the three different types of hand holding conditions. There was holding hands with the spouse, holding hands with a stranger, and then not holding hands with anyone. The dependent variable in this experiment was how the wives rated their feelings of unpleasantness (valence) and agitation (arousal) on a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale. The SAM scale is a 5-point scale that has pictures of a person, ranging from experiencing little unpleasantness to experiencing a lot of unpleasantness. Another dependent variable was the amount of neural activity in the brain there was. This study lasted for two weeks. In those two weeks, participants had two visits that were separated by one week. In the first visit, the couples were asked to complete questionnaires about the quality of their marriage and their personalities. The couples also experienced a mock scan during the first week to familiarize themselves with how the equipment worked. They experienced a mock fMRI scan and practiced pushing a button box that would be used in the experiment. Although electric shocks are a part of the study, participants did not experience these shocks until the second visit. One week later after completing questionnaires and familiarizing themselves with the equipment, the second visit occurred. In this visit, the wives completed a fMRI safety
assessment and were delivered an electric shock on their left and right ankles. The wives also took a fMRI scan before the experiment to act as the control group. This experiment involved 3 separate test trials, known as “blocks”. The first block use the first condition, which was holding hands with the spouse, the second block was holding hands with a stranger and the third block was not handing hands with anyone. The participants experienced a total of 12 threat cues and 12 safety cues in each block. The threat cues were when a red “X” appeared on a black background. This meant that the wife had a 20% chance of being shocked in the ankle. The safety cues were when a blue “O” appeared on a black background. This meant that the wife was not going to be shocked. After the threat or safety cue lasted for one second, there was an anticipation period that lasted between 4 to 10 seconds. At the end of the anticipation period, the participant would be shocked for one second if there was a threat cue. The participant then had 4 to 10 seconds of rest before using a button box to rate their feelings on the 5-point SAM scale. The participants received a total of 2 shocks per block. Researchers found main effects in both valence and arousal. With spousal hand holding, there was a lower rating of unpleasantness compared to a holding hands with a stranger and not holding hands at all. There were also significant main effects in the results of hand holding and neural threat responses. There was a lower neural activation with spousal hand holding compared to with a stranger or no one. The authors of this study concluded that spousal hand-holding decreases an individual’s response to threatening stimuli. As seen in the study and supported by the results, when spouses were holding hands, they did not have as intense feelings of unpleasantness when the shock was administered. The authors concluded that marital quality also had an impact on neural activity. A great relationship results in better regulation of the brain’s stress response and pain processing.