Condition and Stimulus

In the article Measuring the Role of Condition and Stimulus Generalization in Common Fears and Worries by A. Haddad (2005) and the article How do Social Fears in Adolescence Develop, Fear Conditioning Shapes Attention Orienting to Social Threat Cues by A. Haddad (2011), there are many similarities and differences in aspect to their researched conducted. In the first article their objective was to help identify fear conditioning and generalization in different individuals who had healthy personal backgrounds by using female faces as conditioned threat cues which were identified as CS+ and conditioned safety cues which were identified as CS-. The common faces as seen with generalization were conducted to see the similarities to the CS+ and the CS-. Haddad (2005) finding for this study evaluated how fears may be experienced on the similarities to other individuals whom a person has had a negative interaction with. While in the second article Haddad (2011), their objective was to acknowledge how cognitive connections induce social fears and direct awareness in adolescents using neutral pictures incorporating rewarding or unpleasant stimuli during the condition process.

In each study there was a significant difference in the population of individuals who participated in the each study. In the first study there were a total of 47 individuals in which 14 were males and were consented for participation in the study. The median average for age was 22.2 and they all did not have any issues with learning or mental illness history. While in the second study, there were 42 participants picked at random ages 12-15 years old from local school with approval of parents’ consent to participate in the study.

Both studies included a self-report scale that analyze for any anxiety symptoms throughout individual. Also for similarities in each participating study, there was a use of photographs that influenced the fears and worries of participants but age range of participants was different in each study. In the first study they used female faces with neutral facial expressions from the Nim Stim of Facial expressions (Tottenham et al., 2009) which its purpose was to be used as a threat cue for the CS+ and safety cues for CS- but two of these distinct faces were randomly selected and were used to serve as a threat for each individual. The unconditional stimulus was presented for a period of 3 seconds for the fearful expression with a female screaming scream for 1 second. Eight mediate generalization stimuli were tested for the purpose of testing the degree of stimulus generalization. These generalization stimulus were divided into classes