The development of skin conductance fear conditioning in children from ages 3 to 8 years.

Although fear conditioning is an important psychological construct implicated in behavioral and emotional problems, little is known about how it develops in early childhood. Using a differential, partial reinforcement conditioning paradigm, this longitudinal study assessed skin conductance conditioned responses in 200 children at ages 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 years. Results demonstrated that in both boys and girls: (1) fear conditioning increased across age, particularly from ages 5 to 6 years, (2) the three components of skin conductance fear conditioning that reflect different degrees of automatic and controlled cognitive processes exhibited different developmental profiles, and (3) individual differences in arousal, orienting, and the unconditioned response were associated with individual differences in conditioning, with the influence of orienting increasing at later ages. This first longitudinal study of the development of skin conductance fear conditioning in children both demonstrates that children as young as age 3 years evidence fear conditioning in a difficult acquisition paradigm, and that different sub-components of skin conductance conditioning have different developmental trajectories.

[1]  Nestor A. Schmajuk,et al.  Classical conditioning , 2008, Scholarpedia.

[2]  S. Mednick,et al.  Development of skin conductance orienting, habituation, and reorienting from ages 3 to 8 years: a longitudinal latent growth curve analysis. , 2007, Psychophysiology.

[3]  J. Lagopoulos.  Electrodermal activity , 2007, Acta Neuropsychiatrica.

[4]  Fred J Helmstetter,et al.  Activity in the human amygdala corresponds to early, rather than late period autonomic responses to a signal for shock. , 2007, Learning & memory.

[5]  A. Field.  Is conditioning a useful framework for understanding the development and treatment of phobias? , 2006, Clinical psychology review.

[6]  Peter Kirsch,et al.  Dissociation of neural responses and skin conductance reactions during fear conditioning with and without awareness of stimulus contingencies , 2006, NeuroImage.

[7]  E. Leibenluft,et al.  Limbic hyperactivation during processing of neutral facial expressions in children with bipolar disorder. , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  Lynn Nadel,et al.  Stress Differentially Modulates Fear Conditioning in Healthy Men and Women , 2006, Biological Psychiatry.

[9]  Raymond J. Dolan,et al.  Contingency awareness in human aversive conditioning involves the middle frontal gyrus , 2006, NeuroImage.

[10]  Peter A. Bandettini,et al.  The role of the human amygdala in the production of conditioned fear responses , 2005, NeuroImage.

[11]  Andrew M. Poulos,et al.  The neuroscience of mammalian associative learning. , 2005, Annual review of psychology.

[12]  Karl Magnus Petersson,et al.  Context-dependent Deactivation of the Amygdala during Pain , 2004, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[13]  Elliot A. Stein,et al.  Amygdala and hippocampal activity during acquisition and extinction of human fear conditioning , 2007 .

[14]  C. Sandi,et al.  Prior exposure to a single stress session facilitates subsequent contextual fear conditioning in rats Evidence for a role of corticosterone , 2003, Hormones and Behavior.

[15]  Nicole A. Lazar,et al.  Statistical Analysis With Missing Data , 2003, Technometrics.

[16]  H. Barbas,et al.  Serial pathways from primate prefrontal cortex to autonomic areas may influence emotional expression , 2003, BMC Neuroscience.

[17]  Tobias Bast,et al.  Dorsal hippocampus and classical fear conditioning to tone and context in rats: Effects of local NMDA‐receptor blockade and stimulation , 2003, Hippocampus.

[18]  H. Critchley.  Review: Electrodermal Responses: What Happens in the Brain , 2002 .

[19]  S. Mednick,et al.  Increased psychophysiological arousal and orienting at ages 3 and 11 years in persistently schizotypal adults , 2002, Schizophrenia Research.

[20]  S. Mednick,et al.  Spatial but not verbal cognitive deficits at age 3 years in persistently antisocial individuals , 2002, Development and Psychopathology.

[21]  H. Critchley,et al.  Fear Conditioning in Humans The Influence of Awareness and Autonomic Arousal on Functional Neuroanatomy , 2002, Neuron.

[22]  H. Critchley.  Electrodermal responses: what happens in the brain. , 2002, The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry.

[23]  Changjun Shi,et al.  Visual Pathways Involved in Fear Conditioning Measured with Fear-Potentiated Startle: Behavioral and Anatomic Studies , 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[24]  E. Maguire,et al.  Methods for developmental studies of fear conditioning circuitry , 2001, Biological Psychiatry.

[25]  M. Iwanaga,et al.  The effect of UCS inflation and deflation procedures on 'fear' conditioning. , 2001, Behaviour research and therapy.

[26]  Joseph E LeDoux.  Emotion circuits in the brain. , 2009, Annual review of neuroscience.

[27]  D. Fowles.  Electrodermal hyporeactivity and antisocial behavior: does anxiety mediate the relationship? , 2000, Journal of affective disorders.

[28]  E. Gordon,et al.  The neural correlates of orienting: An integration of fMRI and skin conductance orienting , 2000, Neuroreport.

[29]  R. Dolan,et al.  Classical fear conditioning in functional neuroimaging , 2000, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[30]  G. Kempermann,et al.  Experience‐dependent regulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis: Effects of long‐term stimulation and stimulus withdrawal , 1999, Hippocampus.

[31]  P. Venables,et al.  Better Autonomic Conditioning and Faster Electrodermal Half-Recovery Time at Age 15 Years as Possible Protective Factors Against Crime at Age 29 Years. , 1996 .

[32]  K. Hugdahl.  Psychophysiology: The Mind-Body Perspective , 1996 .

[33]  Joseph E LeDoux,et al.  Impaired fear conditioning following unilateral temporal lobectomy in humans , 1995, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[34]  Robert W. Thatcher,et al.  Cyclic cortical reorganization during early childhood , 1992, Brain and Cognition.

[35]  G. Davey.  Classical conditioning and the acquisition of human fears and phobias: A review and synthesis of the literature , 1992 .

[36]  Michael Davis,et al.  The role of the amygdala in conditioned fear. , 1992 .

[37]  L. Goldstein.  The Amygdala: Neurobiological Aspects of Emotion, Memory, and Mental Dysfunction , 1992, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

[38]  D. Siddle,et al.  Orienting, habituation, and resource allocation: an associative analysis. , 1991, Psychophysiology.

[39]  K. Marinković,et al.  Effects of potentially phobic conditioned stimuli on retention, reconditioning, and extinction of the conditioned skin conductance response. , 1991, Psychophysiology.

[40]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[41]  R. Thatcher,et al.  Human cerebral hemispheres develop at different rates and ages. , 1987, Science.

[42]  P. Lang,et al.  Individual differences in autonomic response: conditioned association or conditioned fear? , 1985, Psychophysiology.

[43]  R W Backs,et al.  Effects of UCS probability on the contingent negative variation and electrodermal response during long ISI conditioning. , 1985, Psychophysiology.

[44]  J. Pearce,et al.  The strength of the orienting response during Pavlovian conditioning. , 1984, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[45]  D. Siddle,et al.  Orienting and habituation : perspectives in human research , 1983 .

[46]  E. Ingram.  The interstimulus interval in classical autonomic conditioning of young infants. , 1978, Developmental psychobiology.

[47]  P. Venables.  Psychophysiology and Psychometrics , 1978 .

[48]  M. Dawson,et al.  The role of awareness in human differential autonomic classical conditioning: the necessary-gate hypothesis. , 1976, Psychophysiology.

[49]  H. Fitzgerald,et al.  Individual differences in infant orienting and autonomic conditioning. , 1974, Developmental psychobiology.

[50]  Orienting reactions, expectancy learning, and conditioned responses in electrodermal conditioning with different interstimulus intervals. , 1974, Biological psychology.

[51]  W. F. Prokasy,et al.  Electrodermal Activity in Psychological Research , 1973 .

[52]  I. Mandel,et al.  Is there classical conditioning without cognitive expectancy? , 1973, Psychophysiology.

[53]  M. Dawson.  Can classical conditioning occur without contingency learning? A review and evaluation of the evidence. , 1973, Psychophysiology.

[54]  A. Öhman.  Factor Analytically Derived Components of Orienting, Defensive, and Conditioned Behavior in Electrodermal Conditioning , 1972 .

[55]  E. Sersen,et al.  CARDIAC CLASSICAL CONDITIONING AND REVERSAL IN THE MONGOLOID, ENCEPHALOPATHIC, AND NORMAL CHILD , 1970 .

[56]  M. Morrow,et al.  Differential GSR conditioning as a function of age. , 1969 .

[57]  W. Grings.  Anticipatory and preparatory electrodermal behavior in paired stimulation situations. , 1969, Psychophysiology.

[58]  W. F. Prokasy,et al.  Three components of the classically conditioned GSR in human subjects. , 1967 .

[59]  W. Bridger,et al.  A COMPARISON OF GSR FEAR RESPONSES PRODUCED BY THREAT AND ELECTRIC SHOCK. , 1964, Journal of psychiatric research.

[60]  E. N. Solokov.  Perception and the conditioned reflex , 1963 .