Variations in Skin Resistance and Their Relationship to G.S.R. Conditioning

Abstract

Any particular system which is being conditioned is likely to maintain a certain level of background activity throughout the experimental procedure; either of a discontinuous nature, as, for example, with eyeblink, heart rate and respiratory cycle, or continuously, as in the case of basal skin resistance and muscle tonus. This background activity or level of arousal does not remain constant but usually varies in time, presumably as a result of underlying neural excitation or inhibition. It may increase throughout an experiment if the subject becomes highly motivated, as with the gradients of muscle action potentials observed by Bartoshuk (1955), or decrease, if the subject becomes more relaxed and familiar with the set-up, as Duffy and Lacey (1946) found with level of skin conductance.