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The present study focused on electrodermal differentiation between relevant and neutral items in the Guilty Knowledge paradigm. Three factors were varied in a between-subjects design. The role of deception was examined by varying the type of verbal answer to the questions ("yes," "no," and remaining silent). The intention to deceive factor was examined by contrasting subjects told to delay their answer ("yes" or "no") with those told to produce their answer immediately. Finally, motivation to avoid detection was manipulated by having half the subjects monetarily rewarded for an important (ego relevant) detection task (high motivation), whereas the remaining subjects were neither rewarded nor told that the task was important. The results indicated that a deceptive answer ("no") to the relevant question was associated with an increased differential skin conductance responsivity, but better than chance detection rates were obtained with truthful ("yes") and silent conditions. Equal and significant detection rates were observed when the responses were computed immediately following question presentation, whether the subjects had answered immediately or had delayed their answers. In contrast, differential electrodermal responsivity to the delayed answers was markedly attenuated. The motivation factor had no main or interactive effects on differential responsivity. The present results, together with those obtained in previous studies, suggest that whereas deception is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for psychophysiological detection, it may facilitate detection. Possible mechanisms through which such a facilitation could occur were considered.

High- and low-pitched tones (CS+ and CS-) signalled baroreceptor stimulation or inhibition (US+ and US-) on 6-s conditioning trials (n = 128). Baroreceptor stimulation was induced by the phase-related external suction (PRES) method of Rau et al. (1992) in which a brief pulse of negative external pressure is applied to the neck at systole and one of positive pressure at diastole within each cardiac cycle (the reverse sequence is used for baroreceptor inhibition). Changes in heart period (R-R intervals) confirmed that PRES manipulated the baroreceptors in the presence of CS+ and CS- without habituation over conditioning trials. However, conditioned heart period responses were not observed on test trials (n = 32) in which CS+ and CS- were presented with the baroreceptor manipulation removed. Subjects were unable to state which CS had signalled baroreceptor stimulation and inhibition when given PRES-alone trials after the conditioning phase (differential attention thus controlled). These results (a) confirm that the differential effect of the two PRES stimuli was specific to the baroreceptors and (b) support earlier studies that have found that differential conditioning is impaired when CS-US relations are not processed in attention. We discuss implications regarding when baroreceptor firing might be discriminable and reinforcing.

The sensitivities of T-wave amplitude (TWA) and heart rate (HR) to manipulations of the mental effort (ME) and incentive associated with performance of the backward digit span task were investigated. The experimental task was so chosen because it could be administered without requiring subjects to speak during its performance, thus minimizing the intrusion of respiratory and motor artifacts. The ME required during task performance was manipulated by varying the number of digits presented, creating Hard and Easy trials. The incentive for subjects to perform well was varied by the threat of the delivery of a noxious noise stimulus, which was ostensibly contingent upon adequate performance on some (Test) but not other (Practice) trials. TWA attenuation and HR acceleration were greater on the Hard as compared to the Easy Trials, and on the Test as compared to the Practice trials. No interactions between the ME and Incentive factors emerged for either cardiac variable. These results suggest that the effort and the incentive of subjects during mental work may be indexed reliably by phasic changes in TWA and HR. The conjoint use of these two cardiac measures may also elucidate the involvement of the two autonomic branches during task performance.

The aim of these studies was to determine the effects of instructions and reinforcement contingency on phasic heart rate (HR) change. In Exp. I, 36 human subjects were given 20 conditioning trials with a muscletensing task which produced a phasic HR acceleration. The experimental manipulation produced an elevated baseline and allowed for the observation of instructed HR change during exercise. A 2 × 2 between subject design varied instructions (to increase or decrease the phasic tension-induced HR acceleration) and contingency (whether the verbal reinforcement was contingent on or unrelated to HR change) as factors. There was a significant instructional effect at the end of conditioning, with increase subjects producing more HR acceleration and decrease subjects less acceleration relative to pretrials. The instructional effect developed over trials and decrease subjects significantly improved with practice. There was no difference between contingent and non-contingent groups in either of the two conditions in ability to change HR in the instructed direction. This study shows the usefulness of the elevated baseline technique for cardiac research. A second experiment demonstrated that, in subjects not instructed to attempt HR change, the phasic HR response did not change in magnitude over conditioning. The results of these studies indicate that subjects are able to control phasic HR during physical-stress induced tension but biofeedback is not relevant for the production of such HR changes.

The primary aims are to elaborate on and clarify two general issues which are raised in the context of assessing contingency theory: (a) the operational requirements and the psychophysical considerations for assessing autonomic excitatory and inhibitory factors in Pavlovian conditioning, and (b) the topic of the appropriate CR specification in the autonomic electrodermal system. Our substantive conclusion, based on an evaluation of the methodology of available human autonomic studies, is that there is no empirical support for the contingency truly random control procedure. In addition, contrary to the suggestion of striking analogies with the skeletal eyelid system, a latency criterion should not be used to deny associative status to first-interval electrodermal responses, provided that these do satisfy conventional behavioral criteria for associative conditioning, e.g., discrimination.

Twenty Ss were presented with 15 300-msec tones (for half the Ss) or lights (for the remaining Ss) followed by a change trial to the other modality. There was highly reliable habituation in the electrodermal skin resistance response (SRR) and the plethysmographic pulse volume (PV), but no clear habituation in the plethysmographic blood volume (BV). Change produced reliable increases in all three orienting-reaction (OR) components. Application of signal-detection methods showed SRR to be a more sensitive index of both initial OR and OR to change than either PV or BV, which were not different. Neither PV nor BV were correlated with SRR, but the BV-PV correlations were significant, and, when corrected for attenuation, approximated +.75. The problem of why the plethysmographic OR components sometimes habituate to stimulus repetition, and sometimes do not, was discussed, but it was concluded that while some possible explanations have been eliminated by the present results, the problem itself still awaits solution and poses a challenge to psychophysiologists.

Conventional operant biofeedback methods have not generally been successful in producing large-magnitude cardiac decelerations, whereas a Pavlovian approach using negative body tilt as an unconventional unconditional stimulus (US) has been reported to yield more promising results. The two experiments reported here employed this powerful (elicits decelerations of 35 bpm) new US in an “imaginational” form of Pavlovian conditioning wherein the conditional stimulus (CS), rather than being a conventional and simple one (e.g., tone or light), was the following complex event: the word “drop” to which the subject was instructed to drop his head back, imagine the US, and, to help this imaginational process, to roll his eyes back. In Exp. I this complex CS was temporarily paired with the US at a .5-sec CS-US interval for 12 Experimentals, whereas for 12 Controls the same complex CS followed the US by 17 sec in a long backward-control arrangement. The CS in the Experimentals yielded some 10 bpm decelerative responses relative to the 4-bpm levels of the Controls, and during extinction (US omitted) the Experimentals' decelerations returned to the 4-bpm level of the Controls. Exp. II assessed the possible contribution of the various motoric aspects of the complex “drop” CS by presenting 10 subjects with the same “drop” CSs, but omitting both the associated tilt USs and instructions to imagine the tilt. With these omitted, the “drop” CS produced no significant decelerations. Finally, a significant Experimental-Control difference in Exp. I indicated that the deceleration training shows generalization or transfer to a situation where the subject is sitting up in a normal position rather than lying on the tilt table.

A “necessary-gate” hypothesis is proposed regarding the relationship between awareness of the CS-UCS relationship and autonomic classical conditioning. The hypothesis is that awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition, and a gate but not analog condition, for human differential autonomic classical conditioning. Evidence in support of the hypothesis is reviewed and directions for future research and theory development are suggested.

The main purpose of studying the interrelationships listed in the title was to examine the orienting-reaction (OR) and cognitive (awareness) interpretations of differential electrodermal conditioning (DEC). The method was to perform correlational analyses on the data obtained from three DEC experiments (N = 32, 40, and 32, respectively) which together provided variations in such factors as the CS-US interval, and the sensitivity of the awareness measure of subjective contingency (SC). Following Zeiner and Schell (1971), the OR and responsivity measures were obtained, respectively, from preliminary CS+ trials (tone and light) to-be-paired with the US and from US (shock) trials. The results clearly disconfirmed the cognitive interpretation, since SC was not correlated either with DEC or with OR in any of the experiments. The OR interpretation received some support, but could handle the following aspects of the results only with difficulty: (a) some significant correlations of responsivity with DEC; (b) the fact that the apparently large OR-DEC correlations were reduced when statistical control (through partial correlations) was imposed for the influence of consistent individual differences in responding to the CS+ and CS- stimuli before any conditioning had taken place; (c) the fact that when these individual differences were not significantly present (in Exp. III), the OR-DEC correlation was also not significant. It was noted that the first aspect supported an S-R, contiguity-reinforcement account of DEC, an account which differs from the cognitive and OR interpretations inasmuch as it does not attempt to reduce DEC to some other process.

Classical conditioning experiments which employ CS-US intervals shorter than the latency of the CR, and which therefore require interspersed CS-alone test trials to assess conditioning, are open to the stimulus-sequence-change-elicited (SSCE) OR argument. The form of the SSCE argument which denies associative status to SCRs elicited by the CS-alone test trials is here termed an “empirical red herring” because: a) the argument cannot be dismissed on purely logical grounds, but requires the assessment of evidence for its examination; b) the argument enjoys empirical plausibility in the minds of the scientific community, as evidenced by published statements in both experimental articles and textbook chapters on autonomic conditioning; c) critical examination of the evidence which apparently supports the argument reveals that while the argument has provided a fascinating byway in the progress of our understanding of SCR conditioning, it is now time to bid farewell to the argument since it lacks any genuine empirical base. In the course of examining this particular argument, both the advantages and disadvantages of such arguments for scientific progress are discussed. Finally, it is emphasized that if one wants to study multiple-response phenomena in SCR conditioning, then a longer CS-US interval is clearly desirable. Our message only is that if the aim is to study SCR conditioning—defined as an increase in responding to a CS relative to some appropriate control condition(s) which is attributable to the contiguity of the CS with the UR to the US—in its most robust form, then the short-interval CS-US arrangement should not be avoided on the basis of the SSCE argument which, on examination, turns out to be an empirical red herring.

Negative preception (NP) has been defined as the attenuation of a noxious stimulus by a signal which precedes it. Explanatory theories to account for the NP phenomenon are available, but the concern of this paper is with the methodological and empirical basis for the existence of the NP phenomenon itself. It is argued that autonomic indices based on shock-elicited responding cannot provide unconfounded evidence for NP because of insurmountable methodological problems associated with response-interference and perceptual-disparity (or orienting-reaction) effects. Furthermore, it is noted that when modified unconfounded autonomic indices have been used, the results failed to support the NP notion. A challenge to the validity of the verbal index of rated intensity is then considered, but it is argued that this verbal index is a valid measure of shock aversiveness. Since the rated-intensity evidence is also generally against the NP notion, it is concluded that both autonomic and verbal indices, when properly evaluated, do not support the view that signaling attenuates shock aversiveness.

The validity of the law of initial value (LIV), which predicts relationships between prestimulus level and phasic response, was evaluated for two cardiac measures, heart rate (HR) and electrocardiographic T-wave amplitude (TWA). HR acceleration and TWA attenuation were produced in undergraduates by the performance of the backward digit span task. The between-subjects correlations of prestimulus level with the magnitude of the phasic responses were significant, with signs opposite to that which would be predicted by the LIV. The within-subjects prestimulus level-phasic response correlations, however, were consistent with the LIV. It appears that individual differences in psychologically-elicited phasic cardiac reactivity negate LIV predictions. These results emphasize the importance of sharply distinguishing the between- vs. within-subjects formulations of the LIV, and are contrary to recent psychophysiology textbook accounts of the prestimulus level-phasic response relationship for cardiac variables.

If psychophysiology is the study or differentiation of psychological processes by means of physiological measures, then the experimental demonstration of deception as a psychophysiological phenomenon requires a comparison of physiological responses to two conditions (experimental and control) which differ only with respect to deception. To this end, the Differentiation-of-Deception Paradigm controls for differential question significance and frequency of occurrence. Thirty-two subjects were tested in this paradigm, with the skin conductance response as the dependent variable. We examined, within subjects: a) the basic deception comparison which contrasted relatively neutral autobiographical questions answered deceptively with those answered honestly, and b) the mode of answering, which was either an immediate answer to the question (conventional method) or an answer delayed by 10 seconds. The deception phenomenon (greater responding to deceptive relative to honest trials) emerged significantly (and nondifferentially) to both the immediate and delayed questions, but (perhaps because of response interference) not when responding was measured immediately following the delayed answers. Future research should vary other conditions and measure additional dependent variables with the aim of investigating possible psychological and physiological mechanisms, as well as extending the deception phenomenon beyond its present electrodermal form.

Because certain recently adopted doctrinaire cognitivist positions are just as undesirable as the doctrinaire behaviorist positions of the fifties, evidence is presented to indicate that there are some instances where cognitive factors do not appear to control autonomic conditioning. The first aspect of that evidence deals with tests of the applicability of the contingency position to Pavlovian autonomic conditioning, and the data indicate that conditioned autonomic responses like the GSR do not act like “contingency analysers” over CS-US intervals ranging from .75 to 8.0 sec. Moreover, measures of cognitive subjective contingency (SC), which could not be taken in the animal studies used previously to support the contingency analysis of Pavlovian conditioning, indicate that the human Ss are aware of the contingency differences considered important for autonomic conditioning by the contingency position. This lack of correspondence between the autonomic and cognitive dependent variables is also relevant to another form of the cognitive-control position, that knowledge of CS-US contingencies is related to autonomic conditioning. Such relations were not, in fact, observed between the extents of autonomic and cognitive (SC) discrimination. Finally, a more sensitive and continuous measure of SC is proposed which should yield more precise answers to the empirical and complex question of the limits of cognitive control of conditioned autonomic behavior.

The conventionally used explicitly-unpaired CS– (euCS–) of the differential conditioning paradigm, a stimulus which is negatively correlated with the US, may generate inhibition and hence be an inappropriate control for CS+ conditioning. An implication of this possibility is that the CS+:euCS– performance difference should exceed the difference between CS+ performance and performance to a truly-random CS– (trCS–), a stimulus which is uncorrelated with US occurrence. This implication was tested in a 5-sec delay conditioning skin resistance response study (Exp. I, N = 32) and an 8-sec delay conditioning plethysmographic digital pulse volume response study (Exp. II, N = 48). While highly reliable discrimination between CS+ and the two control CSs (euCS– and trCS–) was obtained in both experiments, neither experiment yielded the outcome expected from the position that euCS– generates inhibition.

Cardiovascular adjustments to physical exertion are known to be affected by aerobic fitness level. This raises the possibility that the cardiovascular responses associated with psychological stress may also be related to aerobic fitness. This study was undertaken to determine if phasic cardiac reactivity to stress would be affected by aerobic fitness level, and to make inferences regarding the autonomic mechanisms which might mediate such an effect. Twenty-four males were given a standard physical fitness test and then divided into high and low aerobic fitness level groups. Within two weeks of this assessment, the heart rate and electrocardiographic T-wave amplitude responses of these subjects were monitored during the performance of hard and easy versions of a mental arithmetic task. Analysis of the heart rate data revealed no aerobic fitness level effect. There was, however, greater T-wave amplitude attenuation in the low as compared to the high aerobic fitness level group on hard trials. This pattern of results suggests that psychologically-elicited sympathetic cardiac reactivity is reduced by enhanced aerobic fitness level.

Because of its ventricular origin, T-wave amplitude (TWA) has been suggested as a plausible candidate index for assessing myocardial sympathetic activity. This idea received some support in the literature but recent (1979–1980) papers from three independent laboratories have criticized the validity of TWA, and have at least implicitly suggested that TWA should be abandoned as a noninvasive sympathetic index. This paper examines these criticisms and finds them to be of questionable validity and certainly not of sufficient strength to support abandoning TWA. Instead, the conclusion drawn here is that we should continue to critically assess both TWA and other noninvasive candidate sympathetic indices by using invasive myocardial indices as criterion measures and both behavioral and pharmacological interventions as manipulations.

Eye-bursts (EBs) in REM sleep are associated with “active'’dream reports. Heart rate (HR) and T-wave amplitude (TWA) were studied during EBs, quiescent intervals (Q), and pre-EBs in REM sleep of 18 normal subjects. A clear and significant HR deceleration (HRD) emerged, which began 3 seconds before eye-bursts, but there were no coincident changes in TWA. Assuming EBs to be an instance of stimulus intake, the psychological interpretation of these phasic HRDs is that they are attentional orienting responses. Moreover, if TWA reflects predominantly sympathetic myocardial influence, then the absence of EB-asssociated TWA changes may suggest a vagal rather than sympathetic physiological mechanism.

It is argued that: if linear trends are present in heart rate (HR) data, due to sinus arrhythmic variation and the gradual nature of the HR response to an external treatment, the time-series statistic successive difference mean square (SDMS) will be a logically more appropriate estimate of HR variability than is variance. A fifty-subject study assessed both the empirical import of this argument as well as the question of the appropriate scale of measurement, i.e., either beats per minute (BPM) or interbeat intervals (IBI). Separate analyses to determine changes in HR variability from baseline to treatment conditions were carried out using each combination of statistic and scale to define HR variability. These analyses showed that HR variability either did not change or was significantly decreased by the treatment depending on the combination of statistic and scale used to define HR variability. This differential result, depending on the type of analysis, was due to the fact that nonrandom linear trends in the HR data spuriously inflated variance relative to SDMS and affected the BPM scale significantly more than the IBI scale. The major result from this study is that the combination of SDMS as the variability statistic, and IBI as the scale of measurement for HR, is both the best and most appropriate technique for assessing changes in HR variability. In addition, the IBI scale should be considered when analyzing mean HR scores if differential linear trends exist between conditions being compared, as in this case, since the IBI scale should increase statistical precision for detecting differences between mean HR scores during those conditions. Finally, when the more appropriate SDMS statistic and IBI scale define HR variability, this study supports the claims of previous investigators who have reported that increases in cognitive functioning led to decreases in HR variability.

The importance of contingency factors implies the contingency prediction: that if CS+:CS- discrimination is obtained in a two-groups design where the control CS- stimulus for the two groups, respectively, is arranged to have a negative (nCS-) CS-US contingency (so-called “explicitly-unpaired” CS) and a zero (zCS-) CS-US contingency (so-called “truly-random” CS), then discrimination in the nCS- group will exceed that in the zCS- group. This implication was tested and disconfirmed for the electrodermal skin resistance response in three 5-sec delay-conditioning experiments (N = 48, 32, and 16, respectively), and for plethysmographic digital pulse-volume change in an 8-sec delay-conditioning experiment (N = 48). Since both the discrimination manipulation (CS+ vs CS-) and, in one experiment, a distraction manipulation (presence vs absence of a distraction task) were shown to be effective, while the contingency manipulation (nCS- vs zCS-) had no autonomic effects in any of the experiments, it was concluded that while contingency factors as represented by the difference between nCS- and zCS- have an obvious logical significance, in human autonomic conditioning, the nCS-:CS- difference is of negligible empirical importance.

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the role of imagery ability in Pavlovian HR decelerative conditioning with a head-up to head-down body tilt as the US. From imagery theories of conditioning (e.g., King, 1973), it was hypothesized that the CR of subjects with good imagery abilities should be more similar to the UR than the CR of subjects with poor imagery abilities. The Betts QMI was used to select 32 subjects for their imagery ability. All subjects were treated identically during the course of the experimental session. Following 10 CS-US acquisition trials, the HR CR was assessed on a second-by-second basis during 9 CS-alone test trials. The data provided support for the hypothesis: the form of the CR was significantly different for the two groups. The CR of the good imagers remained below baseline for 10 sec (the duration of the actual tilt-US) while the CR of poor imagers returned to baseline within that period although the average magnitude of the CR for good and poor imagers did not differ. Implications of these data for human Pavlovian HR conditioning and applied (e.g., desensitization) psychophysiological research are discussed.

Heart rate (HR) is modulated by both branches of the autonomic nervous system. Therefore, the neural regulation of a specific change in HR cannot be deduced from HR changes per se. For example, HR deceleration cannot be interpreted as being due to sympathetic nervous system withdrawal and/or parasympathetic nervous system activation. It is quite possible that sympathetic activation may be dominated by parasympathetic antagonism. To determine neurogenic influences on the heart, one group of researchers have focused on measuring contractility aspects of ventricular function since it has been demonstrated that the ventricles are sympathetically dominated. This paper assesses the validity of contractility-based dP/dt measures as indices of ventricular function, and thus of sympathetic activity, being especially concerned with the noninvasive carotid dP/dt measure which is of particular significance to psychophysiologists. The validation examination consists of an exploration into the underlying physiology of dP/dt measures as well as a critical appraisal of empirical psychophysiological findings related to dP/dt. Other important parameters related to psychophysiological measures, such as obtrusiveness and quantification, are also discussed. The conclusion is that carotid dP/dt has not been adequately validated for use by psychophysiologists and until such basic research is carried out, this psychophysiological index of sympathetic activity cannot seriously be considered a measure of sympathetic, betaadrenergic, or even ventricular function.

Although Schwartz and Weiss's (1983) paper purports to be a response to Furedy and Heslegrave (1983), it does not address the central thesis of that the paper: that the recent criticisms of the T-wave amplitude (TWA) index of sympathetic activity were invalid. Instead, Schwartz and Weiss (1983) prefer to raise further criticisms concerning the validity of the TWA index. In this reply, we provide some clarifications and evaluations of these further points. Our conclusion remains that these further criticisms are insufficient to support abandoning TWA, and that rather the available evidence supports continuing the critical appraisal of TWA along with other candidate sympathetic indices.

The human dive reflex (DR) essentially consists of HR deceleration (HRD) and peripheral vasoconstriction. The dominant view of the DR's mechanism is (adaptive) oxygen conservation such that the DR is often referred to as the oxygen-conserving reflex. However, this and other issues have not been resolved because the literature has lacked precise measurement quantification and experimental control. The present study was designed to test the oxygen conservation hypothesis in a controlled laboratory setting and varied temperature between three groups of 16 subjects (10°, 20° and 40° C). The range was chosen to produce maximal variation in the rate of trigeminal cold-fibre activity, and minimal pain-fibre activity. The response-topography results were consistent with an earlier study, and also yielded evidence that the DR varied inversely with temperature. This seems contrary to the oxygen-conservation view, and indirectly implicates the role of the trigeminal nerves in the afferent mechanisms of the human DR. A physiological analysis of these results is offered.

After a review of the evidence against the role of autonomic responses in the mediation of informational cognitive control, which occurs when merely signaling an inescapable shock reduces perceived aversiveness, it was noted that verbal indices of aversiveness had yielded results which were contrary to the informational control notion itelf. On the other hand, the fact that signaled shocks elicit smaller autonomic responding than unsignaled shocks still does not support the notion, because of confounding through response interference. In the present experiment with 48 Ss, electrodermal recovery time was examined as an unconfounded and novel autonomic index of the relative aversiveness of signaled and unsignaled shocks in a specially adapted form of the differential conditioning paradigm. This autonomic index was sensitive to the UCS-intensity manipulation, but despite this sensitivity, both this autonomic index and other verbal indices showed that, contrary to the informational-control notion, signaling does not reduce shock aversiveness.