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Experimental and Procedural Influences on Differential Electrodermal Activity
Author(s) -
Beijk J.
Publication year - 1980
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.1469-8986.1980.tb00148.x
Subject(s) - psychology , stimulus (psychology) , audiology , skin conductance , differential effects , auditory stimuli , orienting response , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , perception , neuroscience , habituation , medicine , biomedical engineering
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of some experimental and procedural variables on differential electrodermal activity. A standard procedure was designed to evoke a maximum differentiation of skin conductance response (SCR) amplitude between signal and nonsignal stimuli. Signal value was produced by experimental manipulation for 1 out of 10 stimuli. This series then was presented 3 times in random order to the subjects who were not required to make a response of any kind. In a sample of 228 subjects the critical stimulus was identified in 182 cases (80%) by means of SCR amplitude. Experimental or procedural variations such as an attempt to increase motivation not to be detected, auditory instead of visual presentation of stimuli, or the use of a different scoring procedure did not influence detection rates, nor did the fact that women showed slightly higher responses to critical stimuli than men. Manipulation of the number of series presented to the subjects, however, greatly influenced hit rates. The percentage of hits in a subsample of 142 subjects at presentations of 1, 2, and 3 series increased from 58% to 69% and 78%, respectively. These results were related to “dichotomization theory” (Ben‐Shakar, 1977), which states that in addition to the influence of signal value properties of the critical stimulus, critical and neutral stimuli create two distinct categories which habituate independently. Manipulating the number of stimuli in each category will, by consequence, strongly influence detection rates.