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Given that these disorders frequently begin in childhood\/adolescence, an understanding of fear-extinction learning in children is essential for (1) detecting the source of developmental susceptibility, (2) identifying mechanisms leading to pathology, and (3) informing the development and\/or more judicious application of treatments for youth. Here, we offer and validate a novel virtual reality paradigm to study threat-related learning\u00a0and extinction in children that models real-world cues, environments, and fear-inducing events that children are likely to experience, and are linked to the development of fear- and stress-related pathologies. We found that our paradigm is well tolerated in children as young as 6 years, that children show intact fear and extinction learning, and show evidence of divergence in subjective, physiological, and behavioral measures of conditioned fear. The paradigm is available for use in 3-D and in 2-D (e.g., for the MRI scanner) upon request at <jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" ext-link-type=\"uri\" xlink:href=\"http:\/\/www.tnp2lab.org\">www.tnp2lab.org<\/jats:ext-link>.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1038\/s41598-017-17131-5","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,28]],"date-time":"2017-11-28T10:28:33Z","timestamp":1511864913000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["A novel paradigm to study interpersonal threat-related learning and extinction in children using virtual reality"],"prefix":"10.1038","volume":"7","author":[{"given":"Hilary A.","family":"Marusak","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Craig A.","family":"Peters","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Aneesh","family":"Hehr","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Farrah","family":"Elrahal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Christine A.","family":"Rabinak","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,12,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"17131_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1391","DOI":"10.1016\/j.brat.2004.10.007","volume":"43","author":"S Lissek","year":"2005","unstructured":"Lissek, S. et al. Classical fear conditioning in the anxiety disorders: A meta-analysis. Behav. Res. Ther. \n                           43, 1391\u20131424 (2005).","journal-title":"Behav. Res. Ther."},{"key":"17131_CR2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"593","DOI":"10.1001\/archpsyc.62.6.593","volume":"62","author":"RC Kessler","year":"2005","unstructured":"Kessler, R. C. et al. Lifetime Prevalence and Age-of-Onset Distributions of DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry \n                           62, 593 (2005).","journal-title":"Arch. Gen. Psychiatry"},{"key":"17131_CR3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"56","DOI":"10.1038\/sj.npp.1301555","volume":"33","author":"GJ Quirk","year":"2008","unstructured":"Quirk, G. J. & Mueller, D. Neural mechanisms of extinction learning and retrieval. 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