Large-scale remote fear conditioning: Demonstration of associations with anxiety using the FLARe smartphone app.

OBJECTIVES We aimed to examine differences in fear conditioning between anxious and nonanxious participants in a single large sample. MATERIALS AND METHODS We employed a remote fear conditioning task (FLARe) to collect data from participants from the Twins Early Development Study (n = 1,146; 41% anxious vs. 59% nonanxious). Differences between groups were estimated for their expectancy of an aversive outcome towards a reinforced conditional stimulus (CS+) and an unreinforced conditional stimulus (CS-) during acquisition and extinction phases. RESULTS During acquisition, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy towards the CS-. During extinction, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy to both CSs. These comparisons yielded effect size estimates (d = 0.26-0.34) similar to those identified in previous meta-analyses. CONCLUSION The current study demonstrates that remote fear conditioning can be used to detect differences between groups of anxious and nonanxious individuals, which appear to be consistent with previous meta-analyses including in-person studies.