Fear conditioning refers to the process of learning to associate a particular stimulus with fear. This type of learning is widely studied in psychology and neuroscience because it is thought to be a critical factor in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. There are several synonyms for fear conditioning, including fear learning, aversive conditioning, and fear acquisition. All of these terms refer to the same basic process of learning to associate a neutral stimulus with a fear response. Other related terms include fear extinction, which refers to the process of unlearning these associations, and fear generalization, which occurs when fear responses generalize to stimuli that are similar to the original fear-inducing stimulus.