TY - THES ID - 137336005 TI - Angst in het lab: het verband tussen prestatie op een angstconditioneringstaak en angstsymptomen in de adolescentie AU - Creten, Hanne AU - van Winkel, Ruud AU - Samaey, Celine AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Geneeskunde. Opleiding Master in de biomedische wetenschappen (Leuven) PY - 2022 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Geneeskunde DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:137336005 AB - Although it is already acknowledged that generalization of conditioned fear is implicated as a central feature of pathological anxiety, less is known about generalization in a general population with anxiety symptoms, but without formal diagnosis. Previous research has also proved that fear learning gradually improves from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood. Moreover, individuals show less fear generalization as they age. Nonetheless, literature regarding the development of fear learning during adolescence (between 12 and 16 years) in a general population is lacking. Last, it is established that girls are more likely to have anxiety symptoms and are more prone to anxiety disorders. On the other side, cerebral volume at the age of fifteen is greater in girls than in boys. Maybe this could be related to greater functionality of the brain. Yet, literature mainly focuses on the difference in fear conditioning between adult men and women, much less has been described about the difference between boys and girls within adolescence. This thesis aims to evaluate if the propensity to generalize fear in a fear conditioning task is associated with the degree of anxiety symptoms in adolescents. Another objective is to examine whether differences with regard to fear acquisition and generalization can be observed between young adolescents and middle adolescents, and between boys and girls. 50 adolescents between 12 and 16 year old out of the general population were recruited and tested. The experimental paradigm consisted of a fear conditioning task with different circles which gradually increased in size, with circle 3 and 8 serving as conditioned safety cues (CS-) or conditioned danger cues (CS+). The circles of intermediary size served as generalization stimuli. Outcome measures included anxiety symptoms using RCADS to examine how risk rating was associated with anxiety symptoms, and risk rating using the rating scale to examine how age and sex were related with risk rating. All analyses were done using linear regression models. After the fear generalization task, participants completed post-hoc ratings of valence, arousal, fear and shock expectancy for every circle. We found that preclinical anxiety symptoms were not associated with fear conditioning, but were associated with post-hoc ratings. Further, the age of the adolescent was associated with fear acquisition, but not with habituation or fear generalization. Last, we found that sex is not associated with fear conditioning and not consistently associated with post-hoc ratings. In response to these results, we can state that older adolescents are better at discriminating between safe and dangerous cues, which might indicate less susceptibility to anxiety than younger adolescents. However, a higher risk rating is not predictive for the number of anxiety symptoms in this general population, which is a reason to suggest that it is not useful to look early on in the general healthy population to predict the number of anxiety symptoms based on the extent of generalization. ER -