156 Threat manipulation The High-threat group was told that a skin sensitivity test (similar to previous studies 30, albeit not an identical threat manipulation procedure) indicated that nerves in the skin were hyper-responsive and therefore it may potentially be dangerous for them to receive the combination of heat and electrical stimuli. All groups were exposed to the skin sensitivity test, which involved attaching two electrodes to the tip of the thumb and index finger that were communicating with a monitor that displayed a scale (Figure 2). The mock scale was an animation that had a bar fluctuating either in the green zone, with the text “recording safe”, for the Control and High-pain groups, or in the red zone, with the text “recording unsafe”, for the High-threat group. The scale was visible to participants throughout the experiment. Measures Pain measures Participants were provided with an 8 s window to rate their pain on the NRS, following each pain stimulation. A message, presented on the computer screen immediately after the pain stimulus returned to baseline, prompted the verbal pain rating. Fear measures Pain-related fear was measured via self-report and via electromyography (EMG) of startle eyeblink responses. Participants were prompted to rate their prospective fear levels of the upcoming pain stimulus in one third of acquisition and extinction trials, after visual cue presentation and
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