Habituation and conditioning of electrodermal responses in high risk children

Abstract

Measures of skin conductance during rest and during experiments testing habituation and conditioning of the skin conductance response were obtained from 42 10-year-old male children, of whom 12 were at risk for schizophrenia and 30 constituted low risk controls. While typical habituation curves for skin conductance response were obtained from both sets of offspring, no differences were found between high and low risk subjects on trials to habituation, response magnitude, latency, or number of spontaneous responses. However, there was evidence suggestive of differential conditioning in the two groups of children as a function of risk status. High risk offspring produced significantly larger skin conductance responses to conditioning test trials than low risk offspring. High risk subjects were also significantly more responsive to the unconditioned stimulus (loud white noise) than low risk subjects, but half-amplitude recovery time did not differentiate between the two groups of children. Finally, high risk offspring manifested lower levels of tonic conductance during conditioning, but not during resting or habituation. These results lend support to two important recent findings by Mednick concerning autonomic differences between high and low risk children, but do not confirm his findings regarding generalization and half-amplitude recovery time.