Individual history predicted both the sharpness of learning and its persistence.
Who learns a discrimination, and how rigidly, varies systematically between people. Higher tension-stress scores and an experimentally induced drop in self-efficacy each impaired discrimination between ambiguous safe and dangerous cues, and each additional point on a childhood trauma questionnaire raised the odds of persistent avoidance habits by 8.3% and 6.6% across two experiments.
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[1] Supports · 2013
How does stress affect how we learn about safety and danger?Because the study relied on a correlational design, it cannot prove that high tension-stress causes deficits in learning or whether a third variable is responsible for both. Additionally, the sample consisted of young university students with a mean age of 22.00 years, which limits how well these findings apply to the general population or clinical populations. Finally, the researchers used a simple screen background switch for their environmental context, which may not have been noticeable enough to test if learning transfers across different settings.
Original paper[2] Supports · 2019
Does Believing You Can't Cope Impair Fear Learning?Because the study relied on a brief, laboratory-induced drop in self-efficacy, the results may not reflect the experiences of people with chronically low self-efficacy. Additionally, the experiment was conducted solely on healthy young adults, meaning the findings might not generalize to clinical populations who suffer from anxiety disorders. Lastly, the study only found effects on conscious shock expectations, leaving it unclear why the manipulation failed to influence physiological fear responses or subsequent extinction learning.
Original paper[3] Supports · 2019
Does childhood stress make us more prone to rigid habits?Because the participants were young, healthy university students, the results might not represent the general population or individuals with severe clinical trauma. The study used self-reported retrospective questionnaires to assess childhood stress, which are subject to memory bias. Additionally, because the study is correlational, it cannot prove that early-life stress directly causes the brain to favor habit formation over goal-directed actions.
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