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Imagery Vividness Affects Habituation Rate
Author(s) -
Drummond Peter,
White Ken,
Ashton Rod
Publication year - 1978
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.1469-8986.1978.tb01362.x
Subject(s) - habituation , psychology , orienting response , tone (literature) , skin conductance , auditory imagery , mental image , shock (circulatory) , audiology , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , neuroscience , cognition , medicine , art , literature , biomedical engineering
In order to investigate the effect of individual differences in imagery vividness on habituation rate, 14 subjects were threatened with receiving and then imagined receiving an electric shock. Subjects first habituated to a tone which was then used as an auditory signal for the shock threat and the imagined shock. The skin conductance response (SCR) was used to follow the course of habituation. Results demonstrated that subjects with non‐vivid imagery habituated to the tone more rapidly than subjects with vivid imagery when the tone was associated with imagining an electric shock. Implications of this finding for therapeutic techniques using instructed imagery are discussed.