Intolerance Of Uncertainty Affects The Behavioral And Neural Mechanisms Of Generalization

Intolerance of uncertainty reflects the individual’s ability to tolerate uncertainty and is regarded as a trans-diagnostic factor of many psychiatric disorders in clinical research.In psychological measures,the higher the intolerance of Uncertainty scored,the worse the individual’s ability to tolerate uncertainty.Previous studies have suggested that excessive fear generalization is the pathological mechanism of anxiety in individuals with high intolerance of uncertainty.However,the researchers only examined the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and fear generalization,which is not of general significance.Given that fear is a negative basic emotion,and fear generalization belongs to the category of negative generalization,this study includes positive generalization.Based on previous research,we further explore the effect of intolerance of uncertainty on positive and negative generalization.In Study 1,we used reward and loss as unconditioned stimuli,respectively.After Pavlovian conditioning,participants were asked to complete positive and negative generalization tasks,while recording their behavioral responses and neural activity.In this way,we deeply examine the effect of intolerance of uncertainty on positive and negative generalization.In Study 1,we used reward and loss as unconditioned stimuli,respectively.The results of the study demonstrate that individuals in the high intolerance of uncertainty group exhibit overgeneralization to both positive and negative cues,suggesting that the pathological mechanism of anxiety in the high uncertainty tolerance group may be the overgeneralization of cues.Neuroimaging results also showed that the high intolerance of uncertainty group had hyperactivation in brain regions such as the left inferior frontal gyrus,right superior parietal gyrus,right precuneus,and right paracentral lobe,compared with low intolerance of uncertainty.This may be the neural mechanism that leads to overgeneralization in groups with high intolerance of uncertainty.Based on study 1,study 2 used operant conditioning to further examine the effect of intolerance of uncertainty on avoidance behavior based on positive and negative generalization.The results of Study 2 show that the individual’s uncertainty tolerance score is significantly positively correlated with the degree of positive and negative generalization,which further supports the conclusion of Study 1.Furthermore,Study 2did not find an association between intolerance of uncertainty and avoidance behavior.However,the avoidance behavior of individuals is influenced by the properties of the stimulus.At the same level of risk,participants showed more avoidance behavior to negative cues.This study verifies the association between intolerance of uncertainty and positive and negative generalization from different perspectives,complementing the deficiencies in previous studies.We further confirm that the pathological mechanism of anxiety in high intolerance of uncertainty groups may be generalized overgeneralization.It was preliminarily determined that the behavioral characteristics of the individuals with high IU were related to abnormal responses in brain areas including left inferior frontal gyrus,right superior parietal gyrus,right precuneus,and right paracentral lobe.In a word,this study has important guiding value for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders with IU.