Effects of intolerance of uncertainty on subjective and psychophysiological measures during threat acquisition and delayed threat extinction

This dataset includes measurements of intolerance of uncertainty (Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale [Freeston et al., 1994]), trait anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory [Spielberger et al., 1983]), skin conductance response (SCR), fear potentiated startle (FPS) and fear ratings (RAT) acquired in a differential fear conditioning paradigm with habituation and threat acquisition training on one day and extinction training, mood induction (by presenting negative vs. neutral slides), re-extinction training, reinstatement and reinstatement-test 24h later. Overall, 66 participants (female = 44, aged between 18 and 40 years, M = 25.76, SD = 5.82) took part in the study. Several participants had to be excluded due to technical issues (n = 3), non-responding (SCR: n = 2; auditory startle blink: n = 1) and no SCRs to the CSs (n = 1). Visual CSs were two shapes resembling snowflakes. The US consisted of a train of three 2 ms electrotactile square-waves (inter stimulus interval, ISI: 50 ms) and was delivered 7.9 s after each CS+ onset (100% reinforcement rate) during threat acquisition training and three times during reinstatement. The duration of the ITIs ranged from 10 to 13 s (M = 11.5). For SCR measurements, a 1 Hz lowpass filter and a gain of 5 or 10 μΩ were applied. SCR data were scored by using the semi-automatic scoring system Autonomate (Green et al., 2014), down sampled to 10 Hz and scored as the first response within 0.9 to 4 s after CS onset as SCR from trough to peak with a maximum rise time of 5 s. SCRs were square root transformed to reduce skew and z-scored within individuals across trials for day 1 and day 2 separately. To elicit the auditory startle blink, a 95 dB white noise burst was presented simultaneously on both ears. Startle probes were administered 6 or 8 s after the ITI-onset and 6 or 7 s after CS-onset. A gain of 5000 at 1000 Hz and a band-pass filter (28–500 Hz) were applied. Data were rectified and integrated online (averaged over 20 samples) and scored semi-automatically by using a custom-made computer program (EDA View, developed by Prof. Dr. Matthias Gamer, University of Würzburg) as trough to peak 20–120 ms after startle probe onset. For analyses, FPS data was z-scored within individuals across trials for day 1 and day 2 separately. To acquire fear ratings, participants rated throughout the experiment, how much stress, fear, and tension they experienced, when they last saw the CSs. Answers had to be logged in via button press within 7 s on a visual analog scale (VAS) ranging from zero (answer = none) to 100 (answer = maximum). Unlogged ratings were considered as missing values.