Fleeing From the Fear of The Mind’s Eye
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mental imagery can elicit strong emotional reactions. Recent research indicates that fear conditioned responses can be acquired to imagined conditioned stimuli paired with a physical unconditioned stimulus (Burleigh et al. 2022). However, it remains unclear whether imagery fear acquisition is consistent with the depictive theory, in which mental images can be stored in a depictive, pictorial format consistent with a subjective experience of imagery vividness, or if this finding is confounded by participants forming the association through a descriptive, linguistic process. The present study (N=52) aimed to deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanism of mental imagery in the context of differential fear conditioning by combining the imagery-based differential fear conditioning paradigm (Burleigh et al. (2022)), with a behavioral avoidance paradigm (Boyle et al., 2016). In addition, a manipulation of the imagery cue was added to the experimental paradigm in which participants heard two distinct auditory cues (instruction modality: imagine color vs imagine orientation) and received shock only for a specific instruction modality, throughout the experiment. Inconsistent with our primary hypothesis, participants did not exhibit significant differences in the skin conductance responses (SCRs) and the self-report ratings of fear during the acquisition phase. As for the behavioral avoidance phase, different results for different instruction modalities were obtained which contradicted our primary hypothesis. Finally, for the generalization phase, significant differential conditioning to imagined conditioned stimuli, regardless of the instruction modality, was reflected through self-reported fear, proportional avoidance, and SCR. Also, participants exhibited higher SCR and reported higher levels of fear in response to GCS+ (Generalized Conditioned Stimuli, which were visual depictions of the previously imagined stimuli) than GCS-, which, as predicted, indicated successful fear generalization. However, inconsistent with primary hypothesis, no significant difference in avoidance attempts was observed between GCS+ and GCS- trials. More importantly, during color modality trials in the generalization phase, significantly higher SCR was observed for CS+ trials than CS- trials. In conclusion, the findings from the cue manipulation raise the possibility that descriptive knowledge contributes to differential conditioning with imagined CSs. Yet, the mixed results obtained in the generalization phase, particularly regarding the color modality trials, supports the depictive theory.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".