Abstract
The hypothesis that there are two neural mechanisms for electrocutaneous stimulation—one that is sensitive to low current and is adaptive to repeated stimulation and another that is responsive to high current and is less adaptive—was tested in a control and four main experiments. In the main experiments, magnitude estimates obtained for single electrical pulses (of 2-msec duration) were described by a simple power function for each combination of high- and low-current levels and 10 trial blocks. The results were: (1) The slope of the power function for low current was steeper than was that for high current; (2) for low current, the intercept of the power function decreased with increasing block, whereas for high current, it remained constant over blocks; (3) this decrease of the intercept for low current disappeared when judgmental blocks were separated by a rest period of 8 min; (4) the modulus did not affect the slope; (5) for a large modulus combined with low current, the intercept decreased rapidly over trial blocks, whereas for a small modulus combined with high current, the intercept increased over trial blocks. The first four findings support the two-mechanism hypothesis, but the last one may also be interpretable in terms of the regression to absolute scale values.
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This study was supported by Grant-in-Aids for Scientific Research (Nos. 61510054 and 63710068) provided by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture.
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Higashiyama, A., Tashiro, T. Magnitude estimates for electrical pulses: Evidence for two neural mechanisms. Perception & Psychophysics 45, 537–549 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208061
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208061