The impact of previously learned feature-relevance on generalisation of conditioned fear in humans.

•The predictive relevance of stimulus colour/shape was pre-trained.•Conditioned fear generalised from the trained CS to novel test stimuli.•Generalisation was greater to stimuli containing the training-relevant feature.•Influence of pre-training greater for those who reported the pre-training rule.•Experience-based beliefs influence generalisation of conditioned fear.