Fear Generalization Towards a Stimulus and Context and the Impact of Attention Bias

Fear overgeneralization is a prevalent clinical symptom of anxiety disorders. Various research studies have demonstrated that attention plays a crucial role in fear generalization. Moreover, fear is not only generalized to the stimulus, but individuals may also exhibit a certain degree of fear generalization to the context. This research investigates whether fear generalizes to stimuli and context simultaneously and the potential impact of attentional bias. The study involved two conditioned fear factors, a stimulus and context, with visual image materials combining both elements. Participants were instructed to focus on global attention in Study 1, while in Study 2, they were divided into groups based on their attention bias direction towards either stimuli or context during the fear acquisition phase. This study found that participants exhibited generalized conditioned fear to both stimuli and context, regardless of attentional bias. Additionally, participants showed a lower degree of generalization in the area to which they directed their attention during the acquisition phase. The results of this research reveal the differing expressions of fear generalization towards context and stimuli, highlighting the important role of attention in this process.