ArticlePsychophysiology2015
Empirically based comparisons of the reliability and validity of common quantification approaches for eyeblink startle potentiation in humans.
Article in Psychophysiology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Navigating the garden of forking paths for data exclusions in fear conditioning research.eLife · 2019Pooled it
- Acute prazosin administration does not reduce stressor reactivity in healthy adults.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Physical Proximity With Social Support Regulates Vigilance to Threat: Evidence From Startle Reactivity During Emotional Stress Induction.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Effects of cannabidiol on fear conditioning in anxiety disorders: decreased threat expectation during retention, but no enhanced fear re-extinction.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Unconditioned response to a naturally aversive stimulus is associated with sensitized defensive responding and self-reported fearful traits in a PTSD sample.Psychophysiology · 2024Article
- Whose Signals Are Being Amplified? Toward a More Equitable Clinical Psychophysiology.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- HIV Interacts with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder to Impact Fear Psychophysiology in Trauma-Exposed Black Women.Women's health reports (New Rochelle, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Continuous Theta-Burst Stimulation to the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex May Increase Potentiated Startle in Healthy Individuals.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
- Pre-Learning Stress That Is Temporally Removed from Acquisition Impairs Fear Learning.Biology · 2023Article
- Fear-potentiated startle reveals diminished threat extinction in pathological anxiety.International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- Childhood Maltreatment in Females Is Associated with Enhanced Fear Acquisition and an Overgeneralization of Fear.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Alcohol's effects during uncertain and uncontrollable stressors in the laboratory.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2022Article
- Back to Basics: The Importance of Measurement Properties in Biological Psychiatry.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Review
- Low-frequency parietal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces fear and anxiety.Translational psychiatry · 2020Article
- Immediate pre-learning stress enhances baseline startle response and fear acquisition in a fear-potentiated startle paradigm.Behavioural brain research · 2019Article
- Fear-potentiated startle response as an endophenotype: Evaluating metrics and methods for genetic applications.Psychophysiology · 2019Article
- If or when? Uncertainty's role in anxious anticipation.Psychophysiology · 2018Article
- The role of prefrontal-subcortical circuitry in negative bias in anxiety: Translational, developmental and treatment perspectives.Brain and neuroscience advances · 2018Article
- Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance.Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · 2017Article
- Increased startle potentiation to unpredictable stressors in alcohol dependence: Possible stress neuroadaptation in humans.Journal of abnormal psychology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Startle potentiation is a well-validated translational measure of negative affect. Startle potentiation is widely used in clinical and affective science, and there are multiple approaches for its quantification. The three most commonly used approaches quantify startle potentiation as the increase in startle response from a neutral to threat condition based on (1) raw potentiation, (2) standardized potentiation, or (3) percent-change potentiation. These three quantification approaches may yield qualitatively different conclusions about effects of independent variables (IVs) on affect when within- or between-group differences exist for startle response in the neutral condition. Accordingly, we directly compared these quantification approaches in a shock-threat task using four IVs known to influence startle response in the no-threat condition: probe intensity, time (i.e., habituation), alcohol administration, and individual differences in general startle reactivity measured at baseline. We confirmed the expected effects of time, alcohol, and general startle reactivity on affect using self-reported fear/anxiety as a criterion. The percent-change approach displayed apparent artifact across all four IVs, which raises substantial concerns about its validity. Both raw and standardized potentiation approaches were stable across probe intensity and time, which supports their validity. However, only raw potentiation displayed effects that were consistent with a priori specifications and/or the self-report criterion for the effects of alcohol and general startle reactivity. Supplemental analyses of reliability and validity for each approach provided additional evidence in support of raw potentiation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.