Title
Incident experience predicts freezing-like responses in firefighters
Author
Ly, V.
Roijendijk, L.L.M.
Hazebroek, H.
Tonnaer, C.
Hagenaars, M.A.
Publication year
2017
Abstract
Freezing is a defensive response to acute stress that is associated with coping and alterations in attentional processing. However, it remains unclear whether individuals in high risk professions, who are skilled at making rapid decisions in emergency situations, show altered threat-induced freezing. Here we investigated the effect of incident experience in a high risk profession on freezing. Additionally, we explored whether any effect of incident experience on freezing would be different for profession-related and -unrelated threat. Forty experienced and inexperienced firefighters were presented neutral, pleasant, related-unpleasant, and unrelated-unpleasant pictures in a passive viewing task. Postural sway and heart rate were assessed to determine freezing. Both postural and heart rate data evidenced reduced freezing upon unpleasant pictures in the experienced versus the inexperienced group. Relatedness of the unpleasant pictures did not modulate these effects. These findings indicate that higher incident experience relates to decreased threat-induced freezing, at least in a passive task context. This might suggest that primary defense responses are malleable through experience. Finally, these findings demonstrate the potential of using animal to human translational approaches to investigate defensive behaviors in relation to incident experience in high risk professions and stimulate future research on the role of freezing in resilience and coping. © 2017 Ly et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Subject
behavior
controlled study
fire fighter
freezing
heart rate
human
occupation
risk assessment
adult
arousal
body equilibrium
catalepsy
demography
male
physiology
tonic immobility
Adult
Arousal
Demography
Firefighters
Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic
Heart Rate
Humans
Immobility Response, Tonic
Male
Postural Balance
Human & Operational Modelling
TPI - Training & Performance Innovations
ELSS - Earth, Life and Social Sciences
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2e7ec4b2-7505-4a5a-9598-a0e3d8896d42
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186648
TNO identifier
781913
Publisher
Public Library of Science
ISSN
1932-6203
Source
PLoS ONE, 12 (12)
Document type
article