A developmental analysis of threat/safety learning and extinction recall during middle childhood

• Little is known about the development of fear generalization processes in middle childhood.
• Developmental changes in fear learning and fear generalization were assessed with a novel task in 5–10-year old children.
• Older children showed better discrimination and memory during extinction recall than younger children.

The current study examined developmental changes in fear learning and generalization in 54 healthy 5–10-year old children using a novel fear conditioning paradigm. In this task, the conditioned stimuli (CS+/CS−) were two blue and yellow colored cartoon bells, and the unconditioned stimulus was an unpleasant loud alarm sound presented with a red cartoon bell. Physiological and subjective data were acquired. Three weeks after conditioning, 48 of these participants viewed the CS−, CS+, and morphed images resembling the CS+. Participants made threat–safety discriminations while appraising threat and remembering the CS+. Although no age-related differences in fear learning emerged, patterns of generalization were qualified by child age. Older children demonstrated better discrimination between the CS+ and CS morphs than younger age groups and also reported more fear to stimuli resembling the CS+ than younger children. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.