Subjective Ratings Of Arousal Research Articles

Affective processing of loved faces: Contributions from peripheral and central electrophysiology

Research on the neural mechanisms of face identity constitutes a fruitful method to explore the affective contributions to face processing. Here, we investigated central and peripheral electrophysiological indices associated with the perception of loved faces. Subjects viewed black-and-white photographs of faces that belonged to one of five categories: loved ones, famous people, unknown people, babies, and neutral faces from the Eckman and Friesen system. Subcategories of loved faces included romantic partner, parents, siblings, second-degree relatives, and friends. Pictures were presented in two separate blocks, differing in viewing time (0.5s vs. 4s), inter-stimulus interval (1.2s vs. 18s), and number of face presentations (200 vs. 50). Heart rate, skin conductance, electromyography of the zygomatic muscle, and event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained while participants passively viewed the pictures. Subjective picture ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance were obtained at the end of the experiment. Both central and peripheral electrophysiological measures differentiated faces of loved ones from all other categories by eliciting higher heart rate, skin conductance, and zygomatic activity, as well as larger amplitudes of the late ERP components P3 and LPP. Loved faces also resulted in higher valence and arousal, but lower dominance ratings. Additional differences were found among subcategories of loved faces. Faces of romantic partners elicited higher physiological (skin conductance and zygomatic activity) and subjective (emotional arousal) responses than parents, siblings, or friends, suggesting that looking at the image of someone we love evokes strong positive affect and emotional/cognitive arousal that go beyond a feeling of familiarity or simple recognition.

Attenuated subjective ratings and skin conductance responses to neutral and negative pictures in non-psychopathic mentally disordered offenders with various diagnoses

Altered autonomic arousal in relation to offending behavior has mainly been investigated in subjects with varying degrees of psychopathic traits. The present study sets out to investigate subjective ratings and skin conductance responses (SCRs) in mentally disordered offenders with various diagnoses but without psychopathy, specifically recruited from the forensic psychiatric system. Two subgroups were investigated; an antisocial group with antisocial personality disorder (APD) or antisocial traits ( n = 16) and a non-antisocial group with various diagnoses ( n = 25), in relation to a healthy non-criminal control group ( n = 20). All participants were male. SCRs and subjective ratings of arousal and valence were measured for neutral and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The offenders showed significantly lower SCRs and subjective ratings than the control group. Moreover, there was no significant difference between antisocial and non-antisocial offenders, indicating that antisocial behavior might not be a differential factor. Thus, attenuated emotional responses may be a characteristic shared by mentally disordered offenders overall.

Service robot feature design effects on user perceptions and emotional responses

Service robots have been developed to assist nurses in routine patient services. Prior research has recognized that patient emotional experiences with robots may be as important as robot task performance in terms of user acceptance and assessments of effectiveness. The objective of this study was to understand the effect of different service robot interface features on elderly perceptions and emotional responses in a simulated medicine delivery task. Twenty-four participants sat in a simulated patient room and a service robot delivered a bag of “medicine” to them. Repeated trials were used to present variations on three robot features, including facial configuration, voice messaging and interactivity. Participant heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) were collected. Participant ratings of robot humanness [perceived anthropomorphism (PA)] were collected post-trial along with subjective ratings of arousal (bored–excited) and valence (unhappy–happy) using the self-assessment manikin (SAM) questionnaire. Results indicated the presence of all three types of robot features promoted higher PA, arousal and valence, compared to a control condition (a robot without any of the features). Participant physiological responses varied with events in their interaction with the robot. The three types of features also had different utility for stimulating participant arousal and valence, as well as physiological responses. In general, results indicated that adding anthropomorphic and interactive features to service robots promoted positive emotional responses [increased excitement (GSR) and happiness (HR)] in elderly users. It is expected that results from this study could be used as a basis for developing affective robot interface design guidelines to promote user emotional experiences.

Neural correlates of aversive conditioning: development of a functional imaging paradigm for the investigation of anxiety disorders

The purpose of the present study was to establish a short paradigm for the examination of classical aversive conditioning processes for application in patients with anxiety disorders. We measured behavioral, autonomic and neural correlates of the paradigm in healthy subjects, applying functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and measurement of skin conductance. Therefore, neutral visual stimuli were paired with an unpleasant white noise as unconditioned stimulus. Twenty healthy subjects performed three experimental phases of learning: familiarization, acquisition and extinction. Subjective ratings of valence and arousal after each phase of conditioning as well as skin conductance measurement indicated successful conditioning. During acquisition, fMRI results showed increased activation for the conditioned stimulus (CS+(unpaired)) when compared with the non-conditioned stimulus (CS-) in the right amygdala, the insulae, the anterior cingulate cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus, all regions known to be involved in emotional processing. In addition, a linearly decreasing activation in the right amygdala/hippocampus for the CS- across the acquisition phase was found. There were no significant differences between CS+ and CS- during extinction. In conclusion, the applicability of this paradigm for the evaluation of neural correlates in conditioning and extinction processes has been proven. Thus, we present a promising paradigm for the examination of the fear-circuit in patients with anxiety disorders and additionally effects of cognitive-behavioral interventions.

Maternal Perception of Infants’ Expressions of Emotion

In light of Lang’s differentiation of the aversive and the approach system – and assumptions stemming from attachment theory – this study investigates the role of the approach or caregiving system for processing infant emotional stimuli by comparing IAPS pictures, infant pictures, and videos. IAPS pictures, infant pictures, and infant videos of positive, neutral, or negative content were presented to 69 mothers, accompanied by randomized startle probes. The assessment of emotional responses included subjective ratings of valence and arousal, corrugator activity, the startle amplitude, and electrodermal activity. In line with Lang’s original conception, the typical startle response pattern was found for IAPS pictures, whereas no startle modulation was observed for infant pictures. Moreover, the startle amplitudes during negative video scenes depicting crying infants were reduced. The results are discussed with respect to several theoretical and methodological considerations, including Lang’s theory, emotion regulation, opponent process theory, and the parental caregiving system.

Laser Doppler Imaging of Genital Blood Flow: A Direct Measure of Female Sexual Arousal

Female sexual arousal is a challenging construct to measure, partly because of the subtle nature of its indicators, vaginal lubrication and genital swelling. As a result, many instruments have been used in an attempt to accurately measure it; however, problems are associated with each. Furthermore, the relationship between subjective and physiological indicators of arousal appears to be influenced by the instrument used to measure physiological arousal. Specifically, instruments measuring physiological arousal internally yield lower correlations between measures of physiological and subjective arousal than instruments examining the external genitals. Laser Doppler imaging (LDI) is a direct measure of external genital blood flow. The purpose of this study was to investigate the usefulness of LDI for measuring genital blood flow in women in response to erotic visual stimuli, and to explore the relationship between physiological and subjective sexual arousal. Sixty-five participants watched three 15-minute films during LDI scanning. Two nature films (measuring acclimatization and baseline blood flow levels) and one randomly assigned experimental film (erotic, anxiety, humor, or neutral) were used. Participants rated their level of subjective arousal following the third film. Results indicated a significant effect of film condition on genital blood flow, P < 0.001, with the erotic condition differing significantly from the other three conditions. In terms of the relationship between physiological and subjective sexual arousal, physiological arousal was significantly predicted by subjective ratings of sexual arousal (P < 0.001). LDI appears to be able to differentiate blood flow during erotic and nonerotic conditions. In addition, physiological sexual arousal was significantly predicted by women's reported subjective sexual arousal. These findings suggest that LDI is a useful instrument for measuring female sexual arousal, and that women may be more aware of their level of physiological arousal than previously assumed.

Enter feelings: Somatosensory responses following early stages of visual induction of emotion

In a MEG experiment, we imaged the early dynamics of the human cerebral cortex during the induction of emotion by visual stimuli. We tested the hypothesis that early cortical responses would correlate with the emotional competence of visual stimuli and subsequent subjective ratings of feeling in a set of specific target regions important for somatosensory, attentional, and motivational functions, just after initial visual and appraisal related cortical responses to picture presentation. Relative to the neutral condition, cortical responses, during the 350–500 ms phase of the MEG evoked response, were stronger for both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli in the orbitofrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and somatosensory cortices. These responses, which correlated with subjective ratings of arousal, emerged after an initial spreading of cortical activity from early visual cortex (70–200 ms) to the ventral visual stream, temporopolar and orbitofrontal regions (200–350 ms), higher for emotionally competent stimuli than for neutral in the 200–350 ms window, in a manner compatible with an appraisal function. Heart beats occurring during the first 500 ms post stimulus showed longer intervals for unpleasant than for neutral stimuli relative to the preceding beat. The results support the hypothesis of a sequence of processing regarding the emergence of feelings and suggest that, even in the early phase of feeling induction, actual body responses to the inducing stimuli could be represented in the brain.

Does vivid emotional imagery depend on body signals?

The recall and re-experiencing of a personal emotional event (emotional imagery) are thought to evoke neural activity in the central nervous system that can affect the physiology of bodily states. It has been proposed that the more active the neural systems previously engaged in the emotional experience, and the more active the bodily state associated with that experience, the more vivid the emotional imagery is. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the gastrointestinal system (GI) are engaged in emotional reactions. On this basis, we hypothesized that vivid emotional imagery would be accompanied by strong increases in gastrointestinal and sympathetic nervous system activity. To test this hypothesis, 17 healthy participants performed emotional imagery of strong autobiographical memories involving various emotional states (happy, fear, disgust, sadness, anger). SNS and GI changes, measured by skin conductance and electrogastrogram, respectively, correlated positively with subjective ratings of arousal during the imagery. However, the SNS changes did not correlate with ratings of emotional imagery vividness, and even more intriguingly, the GI changes correlated strongly and negatively with vividness ratings. To account for these findings, we propose that in highly vivid imagery experience, the central nervous system is simulating the whole emotional experience strongly, and bodily information plays a lesser role. In low vivid imagery experience, the central nervous system is not simulating very strongly the emotional experience, and information coming from the body (including the GI system) plays a greater role. This interpretation is set forth in the context of Damasio's [Damasio, A., (1999) The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness, Orlando, Fl, Harcourt.] theoretical framework, which predicts such a dissociation between a “body loop” and an “as if body loop” for the experiencing and re-experiencing of emotions and feelings.

The use of an unpleasant sound unconditional stimulus in an aversive conditioning procedure with 8- to 11-year-old children

The study of aversive Pavlovian conditioning in children can contribute to our understanding of how fears are acquired and extinguished during development. However, methodological issues hamper further research because of ethical and procedural concerns regarding the use of traditional aversive unconditional stimuli (USs) and no established method to measure trial-by-trial changes in the child's expectancy of the US. The present experiment used geometric shape conditional stimuli (CSs) and an unpleasant sound US with 8- to 11-year-old children. Reliable acquisition and extinction were observed with first, second, and third interval skin conductance responses, on-line expectancy judgments, and post-conditioning subjective ratings of pleasantness and arousal. The experiment confirms the novel use of an unpleasant sound of metal scraping on slate as a US in aversive conditioning with children. The methods have the potential to facilitate the ethical conduct of aversive conditioning research in children using psychophysiological, affective, and self-report expectancy measures.

Seeing direct and averted gaze activates the approach–avoidance motivational brain systems

Gaze direction is known to be an important factor in regulating social interaction. Recent evidence suggests that direct and averted gaze can signal the sender's motivational tendencies of approach and avoidance, respectively. We aimed at determining whether seeing another person's direct vs. averted gaze has an influence on the observer's neural approach–avoidance responses. We also examined whether it would make a difference if the participants were looking at the face of a real person or a picture. Measurements of hemispheric asymmetry in the frontal electroencephalographic activity indicated that another person's direct gaze elicited a relative left-sided frontal EEG activation (indicative of a tendency to approach), whereas averted gaze activated right-sided asymmetry (indicative of avoidance). Skin conductance responses were larger to faces than to control objects and to direct relative to averted gaze, indicating that faces, in general, and faces with direct gaze, in particular, elicited more intense autonomic activation and strength of the motivational tendencies than did control stimuli. Gaze direction also influenced subjective ratings of emotional arousal and valence. However, all these effects were observed only when participants were facing a real person, not when looking at a picture of a face. This finding was suggested to be due to the motivational responses to gaze direction being activated in the context of enhanced self-awareness by the presence of another person. The present results, thus, provide direct evidence that eye contact and gaze aversion between two persons influence the neural mechanisms regulating basic motivational–emotional responses and differentially activate the motivational approach–avoidance brain systems.

Acute Effects of Nicotine on Physiological and Subjective Sexual Arousal in Nonsmoking Men: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial

Chronic nicotine treatment has deleterious effects on vascular functioning and catecholamine modulation, which may compromise erectile functioning. Evidence that long-term cigarette smoking is an independent risk factor for introducing impotence is robust. However, limited studies have focused on the acute effects of smoking on physiological sexual response, and none have investigated the deleterious effects of isolated nicotine on human sexual arousal. Consequently, pathophysiological underpinnings of tobacco-induced-and particularly, nicotine-induced-erectile dysfunction are not well understood. To provide the first empirical examination of the acute effects of isolated nicotine on sexual arousal in nonsmoking men. Twenty-eight sexually functional heterosexual men (mean age 21 years), each with less than 100 direct exposures to nicotine, participated in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial. Participants received either Nicorette polacrilex gum (SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) (6 mg; approximately equivalent to smoking one high-yield cigarette) or placebo gum, matched for appearance, taste, and consistency, approximately 40 minutes prior to viewing an erotic film. Physiological (circumferential change via penile plethysmography) and subjective (continuous self-report) sexual responses to erotic stimuli were examined, as well as changes in mood. Nicotine significantly reduced erectile responses to the erotic films (P = 0.02), corresponding to a 23% reduction in physiological sexual arousal. This occurred in 16 of 20 men with valid physiological recordings. Nicotine had no significant effect on continuous subjective ratings of sexual arousal (P = 0.70) or on mood (all Ps > 0.05). Isolated nicotine can significantly attenuate physiological sexual arousal in healthy nonsmoking men. These findings have implications for elucidating physiological mechanisms responsible for the effects of nicotine on sexual dysfunction, and for assisting public health policy in considering the deleterious effects of nicotine on sexual health.

That baby caught my eye... Attention capture by infant faces.

An alternative to the view that during evolution the human brain became specialized to preferentially attend to threat-related stimuli is to assume that all classes of stimuli that have high biological significance are prioritized by the attention system. Newborns are highly biologically relevant stimuli for members of a species, as their survival is important for reproductive success. The authors examined whether the Kindchenschema (baby schema) as described by Lorenz (1943) captures attention in the dot probe task. The results confirm attentional capture by photos of human infants presented to the left visual field, suggesting right hemisphere advantage. The magnitude of the attentional modulation was highly correlated with subjective arousal ratings of the photos. The findings show that biologically significant positive stimuli are prioritized by the attention system.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH—PHYSIOLOGY: Thermography as a Physiological Measure of Sexual Arousal in Both Men and Women

ABSTRACT Introduction Current physiological measures of sexual arousal are intrusive, hard to compare between genders, and quantitatively problematic. Aim To investigate thermal imaging technology as a means of solving these problems. Methods Twenty-eight healthy men and 30 healthy women viewed a neutral film clip, after which they were randomly assigned to view one of three other video conditions: (i) neutral (N=19); (ii) humor (N=19); and (iii) sexually explicit (N=20). Main Outcome Measures Genital and thigh temperatures were continuously recorded using a TSA ImagIR camera. Subjective measures of sexual arousal, humor, and relaxation were assessed using Likert-style questions prior to showing the baseline video and following each film. Results Statistical (Tukey HSD) post-hoc comparisons (P &amp;lt;0.05) demonstrated that both men and women viewing the sexually arousing video had significantly greater genital temperature (mean=33.89°C, SD=1.00) than those in the humor (mean=32.09°C, SD=0.93) or neutral (mean=32.13°C, SD=1.24) conditions. Men and women in the erotic condition did not differ from each other in time to peak genital temperature (men mean=664.6 seconds, SD=164.99; women mean=743 seconds, SD=137.87). Furthermore, genital temperature was significantly and highly correlated with subjective ratings of sexual arousal (range r =0.51–0.68, P &amp;lt;0.001). There were no significant differences in thigh temperature between groups. Conclusion Thermal imaging is a promising technology for the assessment of physiological sexual arousal in both men and women.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Clitoral Color Doppler Ultrasonography as a Measure of Female Sexual Arousal

We examined the convergent and discriminant validity of clitoral ultrasonography as a measure of female sexual arousal by assessing the following: (a) its ability to discriminate between sexual and other forms of arousal; and (b) its correlation with subjective ratings of arousal. Results from 63 healthy premenopausal women indicate that ultrasonography was not successful in differentiating sexual arousal from a humor control condition. Furthermore, there were no significant correlations between clitoral blood-flow measures and subjective sexual arousal. Additional research is required to establish the specificity of ultrasonography as a measure of sexual arousal.

When does size not matter? Effects of stimulus size on affective modulation

Motivationally relevant stimuli have been shown to receive prioritized processing compared to neutral stimuli at distinct processing stages. This effect has been related to the evolutionary importance of rapidly detecting dangers and potential rewards and has been shown to be modulated by the distance between an organism and a faced stimulus. Similarly, recent studies showed degrees of emotional modulation of autonomic responses and subjective arousal ratings depending on stimulus size. In the present study, affective modulation of pictures presented in different sizes was investigated by measuring event-related potentials during a two-choice categorization task. Results showed significant emotional modulation across all sizes at both earlier and later stages of processing. Moreover, affective modulation of earlier processes was reduced in smaller compared to larger sizes, whereas no changes in affective modulation were observed at later stages.

Gastric myoelectrical activity as an index of emotional arousal

Autonomic nervous system parameters such as electrodermal activity, heart rate, and facial EMG have been utilized extensively as measures of emotional arousal. One measure that has rarely been employed in this setting is gastric myoelectrical activity, despite the fact that “gut feelings” have an obvious and even profound role in everyday emotional life. It has been shown that the gastrointestinal system changes wall tonus and contraction rate during stressful tasks. However, the effects of emotionally salient stimuli on gastrointestinal motility have scarcely been studied. In the current study, emotional film clips designed to elicit happiness, disgust, fear, sadness, or no emotion (neutral) were presented to 16 normal participants. Electrogastrogram (EGG), skin conductance, and heart rate were measured while the participants viewed the film clips, and participants rated subjective arousal intensity and pleasantness of the film clips. We found that emotional film clips reliably induced the intended subjective feeling states. Also, EGG peak amplitudes in fear, disgust, sadness and happiness were higher than in the no emotion condition. There was a strong positive correlation ( r = 0.64) between EGG peak amplitude and subjective ratings of arousal. This is the first evidence that gastric myoelectrical activity is strongly correlated with arousal ratings to emotionally salient stimuli, and it suggests that EGG may add useful information about how the body contributes to the phenomenology of emotion and feeling.

Diazepam-induced prospective memory impairment and its relation to retrospective memory, attention, and arousal

The amnestic effects of benzodiazepines are well documented on a variety of memory tasks. However, prospective memory (PM), or remembering to execute an action at a future time, has not been studied previously. This study examined the effect of diazepam on word list recall, PM, sustained attention, and subjective ratings of arousal. Forty-eight healthy participants, aged 19-35, received an average of 0.19 mg/kg oral diazepam or placebo in a double-blind manner. Retrospective memory and PM were assessed by free recall of unrelated word lists and by instructing participants to request a hidden belonging at the end of the session, respectively. Sustained attention was measured by multiple trials of a digit cancellation task, and subjective arousal was assessed by self-ratings of drowsiness. Diazepam impaired performance on all measures, including PM. Reduced PM performance was associated with decreased subjective arousal in the diazepam group but was unrelated to sustained attention. This is the first report of the effects of benzodiazepines on prospective remembering, and further supports the view that the arousal/attentional system is composed of partially independent subsystems that have differential relationships to memory.

P.1.080 Assessment of cerebral regions associatedwith sexual arousal in depressive women before and after antidepressant treatment by using BOLD-fMRI

Chronic nicotine treatment has deleterious effects on vascular functioning and catecholamine modulation, which may compromise erectile functioning. Evidence that long-term cigarette smoking is an independent risk factor for introducing impotence is robust. However, limited studies have focused on the acute effects of smoking on physiological sexual response, and none have investigated the deleterious effects of isolated nicotine on human sexual arousal. Consequently, pathophysiological underpinnings of tobacco-induced—and particularly, nicotine-induced—erectile dysfunction are not well understood.To provide the first empirical examination of the acute effects of isolated nicotine on sexual arousal in nonsmoking men.Twenty-eight sexually functional heterosexual men (mean age 21 years), each with less than 100 direct exposures to nicotine, participated in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial. Participants received either Nicorette polacrilex gum (SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) (6 mg; approximately equivalent to smoking one high-yield cigarette) or placebo gum, matched for appearance, taste, and consistency, approximately 40 minutes prior to viewing an erotic film.Physiological (circumferential change via penile plethysmography) and subjective (continuous self-report) sexual responses to erotic stimuli were examined, as well as changes in mood.Nicotine significantly reduced erectile responses to the erotic films (P = 0.02), corresponding to a 23% reduction in physiological sexual arousal. This occurred in 16 of 20 men with valid physiological recordings. Nicotine had no significant effect on continuous subjective ratings of sexual arousal (P = 0.70) or on mood (all Ps > 0.05).Isolated nicotine can significantly attenuate physiological sexual arousal in healthy nonsmoking men. These findings have implications for elucidating physiological mechanisms responsible for the effects of nicotine on sexual dysfunction, and for assisting public health policy in considering the deleterious effects of nicotine on sexual health. Harte CB, and Meston CM. Acute effects of nicotine on physiological and subjective sexual arousal in nonsmoking men: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Preparing computers for affective communication: a psychophysiological concept and preliminary results.

Despite rapid advances in technology, computers remain incapable of responding to human emotions. An exploratory study was conducted to find out what physiological parameters might be useful to differentiate among 4 emotional states, based on 2 dimensions: pleasantness versus unpleasantness and arousal versus relaxation. The 4 emotions were induced by exposing 26 undergraduate students to different combinations of olfactory and auditory stimuli, selected in a pretest from 12 stimuli by subjective ratings of arousal and valence. Changes in electroencephalographic (EEG), heart rate variability, and electrodermal measures were used to differentiate the 4 emotions. EEG activity separates pleasantness from unpleasantness only in the aroused but not in the relaxed domain, where electrodermal parameters are the differentiating ones. All three classes of parameters contribute to a separation between arousal and relaxation in the positive valence domain, whereas the latency of the electrodermal response is the only differentiating parameter in the negative domain. We discuss how such a psychophysiological approach may be incorporated into a systemic model of a computer responsive to affective communication from the user.

Female sexual arousal: a behavioral analysis

Objective This study was designed to assess female sexual arousal by using a combination of physiologic measures and self-reported level of arousal. Design Twenty subjects viewed a 23-minute sequence of randomly ordered relaxation and erotic tapes, both with and without auditory stimulus. The physiologic parameters of vaginal blood flow, galvanic skin resistance, respiration, pulse, and blood pressure, as well as self-reported level of arousal, were simultaneously recorded and correlated with video segments. Setting An academic teaching hospital. Patient(s) The 20 subjects (mean age ± SD: 24.9 ± 3.0 years) included Caucasian (10), Hispanic (2), Asian-American (4), and African-American (4) women. All women were screened for normal sexual function with the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) and with the Beck Anxiety Inventory and Beck Depression Inventory. Intervention(s) Randomly ordered sequences of erotic and relaxation tapes with and without sound. Main outcome measure(s) Physiologic and behavioral data, as well as subjective arousal rating, were acquired. The resulting set of multichannel data was correlated with erotic segments and analyzed for sound vs. no sound and time to maximal physiologic arousal. Result(s) Four independent variables were found to have β values that were significantly different from 0: respiration (mean = −0.239, SD = 0.177, range = −0.55–0.09, t = −6.04), VPP (mean = 0.158, SD = 0.37, range = −0.48–0.80, t = 1.91), rVPP (mean = 0.161, SD = 0.35, range = −0.537–0.686, t = 2.075), and erotic marker (mean = 0.582, SD = 0.191, range = 0.16–0.85, t = 13.6). Neither heart rate nor galvanic skin resistance β values approached significance. Respiration period was correlated negatively with arousal rating, indicating that subjects breathed faster when aroused. Auditory stimuli during erotic segments did not increase subjective arousal, and for both subjective arousal rating as well as VPP measurement, maximal response occurred within 2 minutes. Conclusion(s) Simultaneous measurement of vaginal blood flow, respiration, pulse, and a variable accounting for the onset and offset of erotic video segments accounts for approximately 50% of the variance in predicting subjective female arousal. Regardless of the presence or absence of audio input, 2 minutes was the average minimum time required to reach maximal arousal in young, sexually functional women.