Emotion regulation and potentiated startle across affective picture and threat-of-shock paradigms
Section snippets
Participants
Fifty healthy participants (19 males, 31 females) with a mean age of 27.59 (S.D. = 8.94), and average state and trait anxiety scores of 32.10 (S.D. = 8.91) and 34.16 (S.D. = 8.92), respectively (State and Trait Anxiety Inventory: Spielberger et al., 1983) were recruited from the community via newspaper advertisement and reimbursed for their time. Prior to participation, participants gave written informed consent that had been approved by the NIMH Human Institutional Review Board. Inclusion criteria
Startle EMG
The Instruction × Paradigm × Order MANOVA revealed a main effect of Paradigm, F(1,45) = 172.16, p < .0001, indicating overall larger startle magnitudes during the Threat run, compared to the Picture run. Additionally, a main effect of Instruction, F(2, 44) = 15.76, p < .0001, d = .573, as well as
Discussion
In the current study, one word regulation instructions (i.e., suppress, maintain, or enhance) produced linear changes in startle magnitude with enhance > maintain > suppress whether that emotion was elicited by unpleasant pictures or threat of shock. Such findings indicate that the ability to regulate emotionally-potentiated startle is not restricted to symbolic sources of emotion (unpleasant pictures) but remains robust during regulation of emotion generated by actual threat of danger
Conclusion
The current study sought to assess the degree to which willful regulation of emotionally-potentiated startle to hypothetical threat, found by Jackson et al. (2000), extends to regulation of startle potentiation to actual threat. Results demonstrate that volitional attempts to suppress and enhance negative emotion led to decreased and increased startle potentiation to both unpleasant pictures (hypothetical threat) and threat of shock (actual threat), verifying the external validity of the
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Mental Health.
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