title: Demographic factors predict magnitude of conditioned fear.
abstract: There is substantial variability across individuals in the magnitudes of their skin conductance (SC) responses during the acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear. To manage this variability, subjects may be matched for demographic variables, such as age, gender and education. However, limited data exist addressing how much variability in conditioned SC responses is actually explained by these variables. The present study assessed the influence of age, gender and education on the SC responses of 222 subjects who underwent the same differential conditioning paradigm. The demographic variables were found to predict a small but significant amount of variability in conditioned responding during fear acquisition, but not fear extinction learning or extinction recall. A larger differential change in SC during acquisition was associated with more education. Older participants and women showed smaller differential SC during acquisition. Our findings support the need to consider age, gender and education when studying fear acquisition but not necessarily when examining fear extinction learning and recall. Variability in demographic factors across studies may partially explain the difficulty in reproducing some SC findings.
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Blake L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Rosenbaum
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bui
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Marie-France
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Marin
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; The HST-MIT Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Daphne J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Natasha B
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Lasko
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Roger K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Pitman
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Scott P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Orr
authors.affiliation: The Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; The HST-MIT Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, United States. Electronic address: milad@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Mohammed R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Milad
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003193:Compulsive Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D003710:Demography; D004522:Educational Status; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Classical conditioning; Demographics; Education; Extinction; Fear conditioning; Skin conductance