Main Content

Skin conductance

In a typical Pavlovian skin conductance study, visual stimuli serve as CSs and a dc electric shock (10 ms duration) serves as US. The shock is delivered via silver-silver chloride electrodes to the volar surface of the participant's left arm from an isolated transformer-condensor shock generator. The participants themselves adjust the intensity of the shock. In most experiments, the measure we use is the palmar skin conductions, picked up from the thenar und hypothenar eminences of the participant's right hand by silver-silver chloride electrodes, 0.8 cm in diameter, filled with an electrolytic medium. Skin conductance signal conditioning is accomplished by means of a constant voltage bridge and sampled by a computer.

Fore a more detailed description and an application, see e.g., Lachnit, H., & Reinhard, G., & Kimmel, H. D. (2000). Further investigations of stimulus coding in nonlinear discrimination problem. Biological Psychology, 55, 57-73.