Abstract
Electrodermal and plethysmographic recordings were obtained from three groups of alcoholic patients. The groups differed with respect to instructions given for response to a series of words spoken by the experimenter. Group A was told to report verbally their first associations for each word presented. Group B received instructions to think of an association for each word without reporting it. Group C was to respond to each word by repeating it after it was spoken by the experimenter. The instructions did not have the predicted differing effects upon rate of EDR habituation. However, the over-all amplitude of EDR was lower for Group B than for Group A or C. We observed very little habituation of the plethysmographic OR as measured by per cent of subjects responding to each word. As with the EDR data, Group B shows less responsivity, i.e., this group produced significantly fewer plethysmographic responses over all words than did either of the other two groups.
The relative importance of association and of verbal responding to a stimulus word for eliciting autonomic responses was considered.
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This research was conducted at the Malcolm Bliss Mental Health Center, St. Louis, Missouri, and was supported in part by Public Health Service Research Grant No. MH 02755 and MH 7081 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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Gross, K., Stern, J.A. Habituation of orienting responses as a function of “instructional set”. Conditional Reflex 2, 23–36 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03034093
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03034093