The Orienting Response as Novelty and Significance Detector: Reply to O'Gorman

Abstract

O'Goiman's (1979) criticisms of the orienting response (OR) significance hypothesis are not well‐founded. The hypothesis is not based solely on electrodermal data—studies reporting significance effects for heart rate and pupillary OR are cited. The hypothesis does not discard novelty but suggests that an interaction between uncertainty and significance triggers OR. Differential reactivity across OR components reflects stimulus‐ and individual‐response factors, and does not require separate “significance registers.” Since the hypothesis specifically maintains that appraisals of stimulus significance affect the OR, not the mere fact of cognitive appraisal per se, no general “cognitive appraisal effect” was ever expected. O'Gorman confuses the difficulty of estimating the subject's spontaneous judgments of significance with the relative ease of manipulating significance in the laboratory. He considers classic OR theory more “objective” only because he fails to look closely enough at the complex judgmental processes involved in stimulus intake, model building, and matching functions. O'Gorman's contentions of different initial‐ and test‐ORs, and of a simple additive relationship between significance and OR, lack supportive data and are challenged by available evidence. Literature is cited suggesting that: a) scanning is continuously biased toward the detection of significant stimuli; b) detection of a sgnificant stimulus feature triggers increased information scanning, increasing the possibility that previously unrecognized uncertainty will be detected, and c) lowers the criterion level of the OR “threshold,” increasing the likelihood of OR if uncertainty is detected. Evidence is cited suggesting that the significance‐OR, and perhaps attention in general, is mediated by neocortical‐limbic interaction, the limbic' “motivational” evaluator of stimulus input steering and switching neocortical “intellectual” analyzers of stimulus pattern.

Novelty and significance as determiners of the GSR index of the orienting reflex

“…Highly reliable evidence of GSR responsivity NOVELTY, SIGNIFICANCE, AND THE OR 233 to the innocuous nonsignificant tone and its habituation during training and some evidence of temporal generalization during the generalization test contradict Bernstein's (1979) hypothesis that significance is a necessary condition for the occurrence of an OR. On the other hand, the difference between the experimental and control groups in the shapes of their GSR-OR generalization gradients suggests that the significance of stimuli may predetermine, to some degree, the effects of novelty.…”

“…Results obtained with the innocuous non signal tone are relevant to the current controversy concerning significance as a determiner of the OR (Bernstein, 1979;O'Gorman, 1979;Siddle, 1979). Highly reliable evidence of GSR responsivity NOVELTY, SIGNIFICANCE, AND THE OR 233 to the innocuous nonsignificant tone and its habituation during training and some evidence of temporal generalization during the generalization test contradict Bernstein's (1979) hypothesis that significance is a necessary condition for the occurrence of an OR.…”

“…A growing, salutary interest in research and theory concerning the complex determiners of measures of the orienting reflex (OR), beyond those of simple novelty or stimulus change, has recently developed (e.g., Bernstein, 1979;Maltzman, 1979aMaltzman, , 1979b o 'Gorman, 1979;Siddle, 1979). Stimulus significance is one of these complex determiners.…”

The Effect of Highly Scaffolded Versus General Instruction on Students’ Exploratory Behavior and Arousal

“…Activation have been associated with orienting responses Bernstein 1979;Bernstein et al 1975) to either emotional states (Choi et al 2010;Muldner et al 2010), mental stress (Fechir et al 2008), cognitive load (Shi et al 2007) and performance (VaezMousavi et al 2007b). The simple presence of a new stimulus can evoke orienting responses.…”

Verbal conditioning, task instructions, and inhibition of the GSR measure of the orienting reflex

“…Given the appropriate background or standing conditions, three kinds of initial conditions may give rise to an orienting reflex (OR) as reflected in a measure such as the GSR: (1) external stimulus changes of various kinds (Sokolov, 1963) summaarized collectively as collative variables by Berlyne (1960), (2) the significance of stimuli, learned or unlearned (Bernstein, 1979;Maltzman, 1979;O'Gorman, 1979;Pendery & Maltzman, 1977;Razran, 1971;Sokolov, 1963), and (3) self-generated ORs as reflected in problem-solving activity (Maltzman, 1979;Maltzman & Mandell, 1968;Pendery & Maltzman, 1977). Different aspects of the present study are concerned with the second and third classes of OR determiners.…”