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Time of Quarter Effect: An Uncontrolled Variable in Electrodermal Research
Author(s) -
Fisher Leslie E.,
Winkel Mark H.
Publication year - 1979
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.1469-8986.1979.tb01463.x
Subject(s) - habituation , psychology , skin conductance , confounding , audiology , variables , developmental psychology , quarter (canadian coin) , statistics , medicine , mathematics , history , archaeology , biomedical engineering , psychotherapist
Does the time of the academic quarter in which a subject participates in an electrodermal habituation study have an effect upon electrodermal response components—e.g., skin conductance level (SCL), skin conductance response (SCR), and spontaneous fluctuation (SF) activity? Four groups of 24 undergraduates (12 males and 12 females each) participated in an habituation session consisting of a 10‐min adaptation period and 15, 5‐sec bursts of 85 dB white noise, during the first, fourth, seventh, or tenth week of an eleven‐week quarter. Predictably, all three dependent variables were affected by the time of quarter (TOQ) manipulation and/or by the interaction of this variable with the sex of the participant. Relationships between three meteorological variables—temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure—and the electrodermal variables were also quantified. Several of the correlations between these meteorological variables and the electrodermal measures were found to be significantly greater than zero; however, when employed as covariates, these meteorological variables failed to significantly modify the effects of the independent variable manipulations upon the electrodermal measures. Results are discussed in terms of the need to adequately control for this potentially confounding variable in electrodermal research.