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Applications of cognitive and non-cognitive mediational models in psychophysiology are reviewed, and a case is presented for considering pre-attentive intentionality of the subject as a determining factor in response formation. A paradigm shift away from the S-R causal contingency approach, which structures stimulus and response as discrete and separable events, is proposed. An alternative acausal RS approach which integrates production of stimulus and response as a manifestation of subjects' intentional behavior is suggested. According to this model, 'psychic' and 'somatic' activities are linked in common expression of episodic intentional skills developed by the subject. Psychophysiological measures recorded within one such RS paradigm are illustrated, and some methodological and conceptual implications of adopting a cognitive psychophysiological paradigm are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four experiments investigated the effects of instructions, response-contingent shock, and the latency of the critical response on the GSR. Using a discrimination procedure, in which responding in the presence of one stimulus avoided shock while responding in the presence of another led to shock, it was found that relative to non-instructed, yoked-noncontingent conditions, instructed subjects responded at higher levels to the respond stimuli and at lower levels to inhibit stimuli. The effects of instructions appeared stronger than the effects of the shock contingencies. Only when the "contingent" GSR was of the "anticipatory" latency were differential effects obtained, however. No effects were observed in the absence of cognitive mediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]