Condicionament clàssic aversiu a un senyal i al contextel paper de la consciència de contingència i l'ansietat tret

Resumen

The current prospect on the etiology of anxiety disorders consider that these are the result of the interaction between the factors of internal diathesis of the organism (like genetics, temperament or traumatic experiences of the life) and the environmental elements (like impredictible or uncontrolable events or traumatic experiences) that can increment the probability to develop a specific anxiety disorder. Until now, there has not been devoted too many attention to the mechanisms of interaction diathesis-stress involved in the origin of these disorders. As a consequence, the research on aversive classical conditioning realized with animal and human models, can be of big importance to understand how act the factors of diathesis and the environmental elements in the genesis of the these disorders. To advance in the knowledge of the etiology of the anxiety disorders, the models of anxiety based on the fear potentiated startle as a psychophysiologic marker are especially rellevants to advance in the knowledge of fear and human anxiety. The main aim of this work was to contribute to the study of the role of aversive classical conditioning, as well as the role of the consciousness of contingency and the anxiety trait in the etiology of the anxiety disorders. To carry out the research, we used an experimental paradigm that allowed to study the conditioning to a cue as well as to the context, using the fear potentiated startle as an index of fear. This procedure was applied to a sample of 63 voluntiers, women, selected by their extreme scores in the anxiety trait, considering that a high anxiety trait could be related to a greater vulnerability to the anxious pathology. The aims of the study were as follows: 1) Adapt a paradigm of laboratory for the study of the aversive classical conditioning to a cue and to the context. 2) Study the relation between the anxiety trait and the aversive classical conditioning. 3) Investigate the role of the contingency awareness between the conditioned stimulus and the aversive inconditioned stimulus as a modulator factor in aversive classical conditioning. 4) Study the relation between the anxiety trait and the consciousness of contingency. The main results of this research were the following: 1) We obtained evidences of aversive classical conditioning to a cue, but not of conditioning to the context; 2) We detected a positive relation between the contingency awareness between the conditioned stimulus and the aversive incondicionated stimulus and aversive classical conditioning to a cue in the predictable group; 3) We observed a trend to a greater conditioning to a cue in the group of participants with a high anxiety trait; 4) We could not observed differences between the anxiety trait and context conditioning, as the procedure did not produce such conditioning and; 5) There was not detected any relation between the anxiety trait and contingency awareness between the conditioned stimulus and the aversive inconditioned stimulus.