ArticleJournal of experimental psychology. General2019
Threat learning promotes generalization of episodic memory.
Article in Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early life stress sensitizes youth to the influence of stress-induced cortisol on memory for affective words.Developmental psychobiology · 2021Trial
- Neural mechanisms of fear memory precision and generalization: from auditory cortex to amygdala.Translational psychiatry · 2026Review
- Effects of novelty and reward-based fear extinction on memory generalization.Behaviour research and therapy · 2026Article
- Emotional learning selectively distorts the temporal organization of memory: A quantitative synthesis.Cognition · 2026Article
- Reinforcement learning increasingly relates to memory specificity from childhood to adulthood.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Breath-Counting Task Enhances the Sensitivity of Fear Acquisition.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Pavlovian safety learning: An integrative theoretical review.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Nucleus reuniens: Modulating emotional overgeneralization in peri-adolescents with anxiety.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Event Segmentation Promotes the Reorganization of Emotional Memory.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- Emotion Regulation Under Stress: A Social Processing and Memory Perspective.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Emotional intensity produces a linear relationship on conditioned learning but an inverted U-shaped effect on episodic memory.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Dissociable contributions of the amygdala and ventral hippocampus to stress-induced changes in defensive behavior.Cell reports · 2024Article
- Investigating the effect of continuous and partial reinforcement in conceptual fear generalization.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Time-dependent neural arbitration between cue associative and episodic fear memories.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Review
- The effects of auditory consequences on visuomotor adaptation and motor memory.Experimental brain research · 2024Article
- Secure attachment priming inhibits the generalization of conditioned fear.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- How emotional contexts modulate item memory in individuals with high and low negative affect and worry.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Editorial: The neurobiological and cognitive underpinnings of appetitive and aversive motivation.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Perceptual Generalization of Alcohol-Related Value Characterizes Risky Drinkers.Psychological science · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The ability to generalize from and distinguish between aversive memories and novel experiences is critical to survival. Previous research has revealed mechanisms underlying generalization of threat-conditioned defensive responses, but little is known about generalization of episodic memory for threatening events. Here we tested if aversive learning influences generalization of episodic memory for threatening events in human adults. Subjects underwent Pavlovian threat-conditioning in which objects from one category were paired with a shock and objects from a different category were unpaired. The next day, subjects underwent a recognition memory test that included old, highly similar, and entirely novel items from the shock-paired and shock-unpaired object categories. Results showed that items highly similar to those from the object category previously paired with shock were mistaken for old items more often than items from the shock-unpaired category. This finding indicates that threat learning promotes generalization of episodic memory, and is consistent with the idea that threat generalization is an active process that may be adaptive for avoiding a myriad of potential threats following an emotional experience. Enhanced generalization of aversive episodic memories may be maladaptive, however, when old threat memories are inappropriately reactivated in harmless situations, exemplified in a number of stress- and anxiety-related disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.