ArticleeLife2025
Reduced discrimination between signals of danger and safety but not overgeneralization is linked to exposure to childhood adversity in healthy adults.
Article in eLife, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Dynamics of Fear-Generalization Processes and Their Predictive Value for the Development of Anxiety-Related Psychopathology in Adolescents and Adults: A Study Protocol for a Longitudinal Study.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2026Article
- Fear Generalization in Adolescent Anxiety Disorders: A MEG Study.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Better Safe Than Sorry? Exploratory Associations Between Fear-Learning Processes and Later Paranoia in Threat-Exposed Adolescents in Standardized Virtual Reality Environments.Schizophrenia bulletin open · 2026Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences Underlie Race-Related Differences in Neural Reactivity to Stress.Behavioural neurology · 2026Article
- Reduced threat-safety discrimination and generally enhanced generalization responses in adversity exposed youth with emerging psychiatric symptoms.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Person-centered analyses reveal that developmental adversity at moderate levels and neural threat/safety discrimination are associated with lower anxiety in early adulthood.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Childhood adversity is a strong predictor of developing psychopathological conditions. Multiple theories on the mechanisms underlying this association have been suggested which, however, differ in the operationalization of 'exposure.' Altered (threat) learning mechanisms represent central mechanisms by which environmental inputs shape emotional and cognitive processes and ultimately behavior. 1402 healthy participants underwent a fear conditioning paradigm (acquisition training, generalization), while acquiring skin conductance responses (SCRs) and ratings (arousal, valence, and contingency). Childhood adversity was operationalized as (1) dichotomization, and following (2) the specificity model, (3) the cumulative risk model, and (4) the dimensional model. Individuals exposed to childhood adversity showed blunted physiological reactivity in SCRs, but not ratings, and reduced CS+/CS- discrimination during both phases, mainly driven by attenuated CS+ responding. The latter was evident across different operationalizations of 'exposure' following the different theories. None of the theories tested showed clear explanatory superiority. Notably, a remarkably different pattern of increased responding to the CS- is reported in the literature for anxiety patients, suggesting that individuals exposed to childhood adversity may represent a specific sub-sample. We highlight that theories linking childhood adversity to (vulnerability to) psychopathology need refinement.
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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 Socratic graph.