Effects of Feedback in a Forced‐Choice GSR Detection Task

Abstract

Previous studies of the detection of internal events have failed to assess adequately the effects of external feedback on detection and identification of internal events. The purpose of the present study was to make use of a signal detection paradigm in an evaluation of feedback effects on the detection and identification of galvanic skin responses (GSRs). GSR detection was measured by the absolute difference between the areas above and below the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and reflected the extent to which subjects were able to differentiate between GSR and no‐GSR trials. GSR identification was measured by the area below the ROC curve and reflected the labeling strategy (accurate or reversed) chosen by the subjects. It was found that external feedback as to the presence or absence and relative magnitude of GSRs was not necessary for differentiation of GSR and no‐GSR trials, and that such feedback was detrimental to increased differentiation over sessions. External feedback may, however, have been useful in directing the attachment of identifying responses to the differentiated internal events. The similarity of these findings to findings reported in the schematic concept formation (SCF) literature was discussed. It was concluded that internal event detection tasks such as that used in the present study may be seen as examples of SCF involving internal stimulus events.

Psychophysics of EEG alpha state discrimination

“…EEG state discrimination has been reported only in a few studies, including discrimination of stage 1 and stage 2 sleep (Antrobus & Antrobus, 1967), visual evoked potentials (in rats; Rosenfeld & Hetzler, 1973), the sensorimotor rhythm (Cinciripini, 1984); P300 amplitude (Sommer & Matt, 1990); and slow cortical potentials (Kotchoubey et al, 2002). Physiological state discrimination has also been demonstrated outside the central nervous system, for finger temperature (Lombardo & Violani, 1994), galvanic skin response (Dickoff, 1976), blood glucose levels (Cox, Carter, Gonder-Frederick, Clarke, & Pohl, 1988), heart rate (Grigg & Ashton, 1986), blood pressure (Greenstadt, Shapiro, & Whitehead, 1986), cardiac R-waves (Violani, Lombardo, de Gennaro, & Devoto 1996) pulse transit time (Martin, Epstein, & Cinciripini, 1980), and cephalic vasomotor activity (Fudge & Adams, 1985). …”

The effect of cardiac detection upon heart rate control

“…Namely,it can be seen that the requirement of an effort to entrain to target responding by the application of artificial feedforwarcl signals would have a tendency to elevate such controllability and help to form feedforward organization into a central system.As evidence for the use of those extrinsic signals to better facilitate the organization formation,the present data demonstrate that the attenuation of the treatment effect as observed in the author's previous experiment is not repeated in the controllability of the two experimental groups for the NEW sessions in Fig.2.Furthermore,an inspection of Fig.2 suggests the interpretation that the training for intcroceptive detection during the BP sessions may have contributed to the differences in controllability among the two experimental and C groups.In connection with this point,the rank-difference correlation was finally conducted by determining the relationship between correct response frequency during the BP sessions and the mean change in HB control during the FW and NEW sessions for each subject of the FF group.The analysis failed to present a significant correlation coefficient between them,although their comparisons approached a significant level,r,=0.666,.1>p>.05. Moreover,according to the figure,decrement tendency in controllability,the same as in the FE group for the initial NFW session,does not occur in the FF-K group which was informed of the control results after every trial.Nonetheless, the difference was not generally significant between the FF and FF-K groups,so the effectiveness of the knowledge in this case as in that of Diekhoff(1976),can not be positively supported.Lastly,as to respiration which was simultaneously recorded no conspicuous change presumably associated with HB control was found for both the FF and FE-K groups.This is the same as in the conventional experiments.…”

Effects of phase‐of‐respiration on GSR detection

“…As no differences in GSR detection performance were found between these two groups, their data were combined. In addition, as neither group showed significant changes in GSR detection as a function of sessions, all results reported here will be collapsed on this factor (Diekhoff, 1976).…”