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THE EFFECT OF PRESTIMULUS VARIABILITY UPON PHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIVITY SCORES
Author(s) -
Malmstrom Edward J.
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1968.tb02812.x
Subject(s) - psychology , mood , skin conductance , heart rate variability , psychophysiology , heart rate , audiology , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , medicine , blood pressure , neuroscience , biomedical engineering
In an attempt to improve the scoring of physiological responses, in terms of higher inter‐correlations of physiological variables and correlations with self‐report measures of mood change, three new scores were compared with Autonomic Lability Scores. The first score was produced by changing the sampling of physiological records to minimize spontaneous fluctuations. This increased the physiological‐mood correlations. The second and third scores provided, additionally, corrections for individual prestimulus variability. Such corrections, done by covariance adjustment, tended to increase the physiological‐mood correlations further. When done by a division procedure, no improvements were observed. None of the three scoring methods affected substantially the inter‐correlations of physiological variables. Heart rate, skin conductance, and forehead muscle tension were measured during two stimuli: a noxious movie and a mild noise.