Figure 5.

Design of the study. During the preexposure session, half of the participants (preexposure group) actively explored the two offices for ∼5 min each, whereas the other half (no-preexposure group) actively explored a stadium for 10 min. During the acquisition session, all participants were passively guided through the contexts on prerecorded paths and underwent a context conditioning protocol in which they received an unpredictable painful electric shock (the aversive US) in one office (anxiety context or CTX+), but never in the other office (safety context or CTX−). During generalization session, participants revisited CTX+ and CTX− without receiving any US and additionally a third office (generalization context or G-CTX), which shared 50% of CTX+ and 50% of CTX− characteristics. Importantly, half of the preexposure group and half of the no-preexposure group returned to the laboratory 24 h after the acquisition phase (recent test), whereas the other half of the two groups returned 15 days after acquisition (remote test).