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An alternative scoring method for skin conductance responding in a differential fear conditioning paradigm with a long‐duration conditioned stimulus
Author(s) -
Pineles Suzanne L.,
Orr Matthew R.,
Orr Scott P.
Publication year - 2009
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.1469-8986.2009.00852.x
Subject(s) - psychology , habituation , skin conductance , conditioning , measures of conditioned emotional response , audiology , fear conditioning , orienting response , stimulus (psychology) , classical conditioning , extinction (optical mineralogy) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , unconditioned stimulus , statistics , amygdala , medicine , paleontology , mathematics , biomedical engineering , biology
Researchers examining skin conductance (SC) as a measure of aversive conditioning commonly separate the SC response into two components when the CS‐UCS interval is sufficiently long. This convention drew from early theorists who described these components, the first‐ and second‐interval responses, as measuring orienting and conditional responses, respectively. The present report critically examines this scoring method through a literature review and a secondary data analysis of a large‐scale study of police and firefighter trainees that used a differential aversive conditioning procedure ( n =287). The task included habituation, acquisition, and extinction phases, with colored circles as the CSs and shocks as the UCS. Results do not support the convention of separating the SC response into first‐ and second‐interval responses. It is recommended that SC response scores be derived from data obtained across the entire CS‐UCS interval.