Habituation and Conditioning of Skin Conductance Responses in Children at Risk

This investigation extends the findings reported by Salzman and Klein (1978) concerning the skin conductance response (SCR) of the offspring of parents who had been hospitalized for a psychiatric illness. Skin conductance during rest and during experiments testing habituation and conditioning of the SCR was recorded in 7-year-old (n = 42) and 10-year-old (n = 57) children. Among the 7-year-olds, 11 had a parent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, 12 had a parent with a diagnosis of affective psychosis and 19 had a nonpsychotic parent. Among the 10-year-olds, the corresponding distribution was 13 (schizophrenic), 20 (affective), and 24 (nonpsychotic). The results indicate (1) no marked tendency toward either rapid or absent habituation in the offspring of schizophrenics; (2) evidence of significantly greater conditioning among the 10-year-old offspring of schizophrenics; (3) only very weak evidence of greater responsiveness to intense stimuli among the offspring of schizophrenics; (4) no evidence of differences in SCR recovery time among the three groups of children; and (5) differences between diagnostic groups among the 10-year-old children in the pattern of tonic skin conductance levels across experiments. Differences in results between the two age groups were unexpected, but may represent either heterogeneity of diagnosis in the parents or developmental trends in electrodermal activity in the children. In sum, the results of this study produce only partial confirmation of the findings reported in the earlier investigation.