Fear Generalization in Individuals with Subclinical Levels of Panic Disorder

Panic disorder (PD) is a debilitating mental health condition, characterized by a preoccupation with the occurrence of panic attacks. Previous research has found that PD patients display increased fear generalization, which entails inflated fear responses to ambiguous stimuli (e.g., intermediate size circles) following fear conditioning wherein a neutral stimulus (e.g., large circle) gets paired with an aversive stimulus (e.g., electric shocks), whereas another neutral stimulus (e.g., small circle) is not paired with this aversive stimulus. The overgeneralization of fear to ambiguous stimuli may be a causal mechanism in the development of panic symptoms. However, this finding requires replication, particularly among subclinical groups to establish temporal priority of fear overgeneralization prior to the development of PD symptoms. This study examines whether fear generalization levels differ between individuals with high and low levels of subclinical PD symptomatology. Participants (N=110) underwent fear conditioning and generalization, measuring physiological and self-report fear responses. Successful fear acquisition and generalization were observed. However, fear generalization did not significantly differ between groups with high and low PD symptomatology. These findings suggest that generalization observed in clinical populations might result from psychopathology rather than causing it. Using both clinical and subclinical samples in experimental psychopathology research is therefore important.