Achievement motivation modulates Pavlovian aversive conditioning to goal-relevant stimuli

Article Article scientifique Article Achievement motivation modulates Pavlovian aversive conditioning to goal-relevant stimuli eng 2019 author Stussi Yoann 0000-0002-8601-6737 700303 author Ferrero Aude 726398 author Pourtois Gilles 563434 author Sander David 558712 10.1038/s41539-019-0043-3 2056-7936 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-019-0043-3 Pavlovian aversive conditioning is a fundamental form of learning helping organisms survive in their environment. Previous research has suggested that organisms are prepared to preferentially learn to fear stimuli that have posed threats to survival across evolution. Here, we examined whether enhanced Pavlovian aversive conditioning can occur to stimuli that are relevant to the organism's concerns beyond biological and evolutionary considerations, and whether such preferential learning is modulated by inter-individual differences in affect and motivation. Seventy-two human participants performed a spatial cueing task where the goal-relevance of initially neutral stimuli was experimentally manipulated. They subsequently underwent a differential Pavlovian aversive conditioning paradigm, in which the goal-relevant and goal-irrelevant stimuli served as conditioned stimuli. Skin conductance response was recorded as an index of the conditioned response and participants' achievement motivation was measured to examine its impact thereon. Results show that achievement motivation modulated Pavlovian aversive learning to goal-relevant vs. goal-irrelevant stimuli. Participants with high achievement motivation more readily acquired a conditioned response to goal-relevant compared with goal-irrelevant stimuli than did participants with lower achievement motivation. However, no difference was found between goal-relevant and goal-irrelevant stimuli during extinction. These findings suggest that stimuli that are detected as relevant to the organism can induce facilitated Pavlovian aversive conditioning even though they hold no inherent threat value and no biological evolutionary significance, and that the occurrence of such learning bias is critically dependent on inter-individual differences in the organism's concerns, such as achievement motivation. Pavlovian conditioning Learning Emotion Individual differences Achievement motivation Goal-relevance Dewey 128.37 Dewey 150 Swiss National Science Foundation NCCR Affective Sciences: Emotion in Individual Behavior and Social Processes (phase I) CH Programmes Swiss National Science Foundation Relevance detection as a psychological determinant of emotional learning 159057 CH Careers 15 Centre interfacultaire en sciences affectives 0D8 108 Section de psychologie 71 false 1241 Affective sciences 593 Emergence et expression de l'émotion (E3 Lab) https://osf.io/eqa6s/ npj Science of Learning 4 4 1adde0d1-1069-4309-b9cc-7bc9518d203d Article (Published version) Public Stussi_2019_npjSCILEARNREDEPOT.pdf 1296096 application/pdf CC BY openAccess Centres et instituts / Centre interfacultaire en sciences affectives Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation / Section de psychologie

Title	Published in	Year	Views	Downloads

Achievement motivation modulates Pavlovian aversive conditioning to goal-relevant stimuli	npj Science of Learning	2019	552	351
Le rôle de la pertinence aux buts dans le conditionnement pavlovien aversif		2018	166	0

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