Abstract
The effects of reaction time (RT) task and stimulus variability upon the habituation of skin conductance responses (SCR) and vasomotor responses (VMR) were studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects who performed an RT response to stimulus onset or who received stimuli which varied in frequency required more trials to reach an SCR habituation criterion than subjects who did not perform the task or receive frequency variability. While the overall VMR magnitude was affected by RT task and frequency variability, no VMR habituation itself was observed. In Experiment 2, the effects of RT task to stimulus offset and stimulus-duration variability were investigated. RT task again produced retardation of SCR habituation. This indicated that the task effect was not simply due to contraction-elicited SCRs, since the task reactions occurred well after the onset-elicited SCRs. Stimulus-duration variability reduced the overall effect of task, and it was hypothesized that manipulations which tend to increase postonset SCR reactivity have a negative effect on the persistence of onset reactivity.
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