In 1960, the newly founded Society for Psychophysiological Research captured the already considerable breadth of the just-forming field of psychophysiology. The Society began publishing Psychophysiology in 1964 with the mandate to address that breadth. As the field has grown rather enormously in the past 40 years, the journal has expanded accordingly. Whole new (and still overlapping) fields such as behavioral medicine have taken root, and new technologies such as hemodynamic brain imaging continue to enrich the psychophysiologist's toolbox. Beyond important domains of clinical, developmental, and human-factors application and exciting methodological developments, psychophysiology has made great progress on basic substantive questions such as the relationship of fundamental reflexes to emotional behavior and the role of regional brain specialization in perceptual and cognitive function. In so doing, the field has necessarily faced up to conceptual challenges such as what is involved in manipulating emotion in the laboratory and in verifying the manipulation.

This study sought to determine whether prepulse inhibition and valence modulation of startle are independent, both within and across individuals. Acoustic probes (105 dB) were delivered as 68 undergraduates viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures. Weak acoustic stimuli (8 dB above background) preceded half of the probes by 120 ms. As expected, startles were larger during unpleasant than during pleasant pictures, and smaller on prepulse than no-prepulse trials. In general, valence modulation and prepulse inhibition of startle were unrelated. That is, prepulse inhibition was consistent across affective states, valence modulation did not differ between no-prepulse and prepulse trials, and valence modulation and prepulse inhibition effects were uncorrelated across individuals. Analysis of raw and percent modification scores generally led to similar conclusions. It is concluded that valence modulation and prepulse inhibition are independent startle modulatory phenomena, although this conclusion is tempered by a finding of poor internal consistency reliability for valence modulation.

The current methodological policy in Psychophysiology stipulates that repeated-measures designs be analyzed using either multivariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) or repeated-measures ANOVA with the Greenhouse–Geisser or Huynh–Feldt correction. Both techniques lead to appropriate type I error probabilities under general assumptions about the variance-covariance matrix of the data. This report introduces mixed-effects models as an alternative procedure for the analysis of repeated-measures data in Psychophysiology. Mixed-effects models have many advantages over the traditional methods: They handle missing data more effectively and are more efficient, parsimonious, and flexible. We described mixed-effects modeling and illustrated its applicability with a simple example.

Real data often do not approximate the normal distribution. Under nonnormal conditions, psychophysiologists who use parametric statistics may be testing with inadequate power and/or testing a measure of location (i.e., the mean) that does not represent the desired portion of the distribution for statistical comparison. The purpose of this paper is: first, to provide psychophysiologists with a method to investigate group distributional characteristics; second, to evaluate the distributional characteristics of heart period and respiratory sinus arrhythmia in human adults and newborns; third, to demonstrate the increased statistical power that can accompany the selection of an alternative statistical analysis for nonnormal data. Suggestions are provided on how to analyze nonnormal data.

A fundamental question in attention theory concerns the earliest processing stages that can be modulated by selective attention. A series of experiments is reported in which very early attention effects are found under specific conditions in the frequency-following potential (FFP), a brain stem response to low-frequency tone stimuli. In two experiments, stimuli of two different modalities were applied, and attention directed to one of the modalities. In two further experiments, only auditory stimuli were presented. In the first of these last two experiments, a dichotic paradigm with sustained attention to one ear was used, in the second a monotic paired-stimuli paradigm was used, in which the first stimulus served as reference for the second one. Only in the last experiment significant attention effects were found in the latency, but not in the amplitude of the FFP. The results show that a very early attention effect on the latency of the FFP can be demonstrated, but only under highly specific conditions. The size and preconditions of the attention effect suggest that it reflects subtle intramodal tuning mechanisms in the cochlea or in the lower brain stem.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is a response-locked brain potential generated when individuals make mistakes during simple decision-making tasks. In the present study, we examined ERN under conditions of reward and punishment, among participants who scored extremely low or high on the socialization scale of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). Participants completed a forced-choice task, and were rewarded for correct responses in half the trials, and punished for incorrect responses in the remaining trials. A significant interaction between socialization (SO) and condition revealed that low-SO participants produced smaller ERNs during the punishment task than during the reward task, whereas high-SO participants produced similar ERNs in both conditions. Reaction time and electromyogram data essentially bolster the interpretation that the ERN effects reflect differences in error salience for high-SO and low-SO participants, and are consistent with the avoidance-learning deficits seen in psychopathy.

The present study investigated the effects of lead stimulus modality on modification of the acoustic startle reflex during three reaction time tasks. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 48) were required to press a button at the offset of one stimulus (task relevant) and to ignore presentations of a second (task irrelevant). Two tones that differed in pitch or two lights served as signal stimuli. Blink startle was elicited during some of the stimuli and during interstimulus intervals. Skin conductance responses were larger during task-relevant stimuli in both groups. Larger blink facilitation during task-relevant stimuli was found only in the group presented with auditory stimuli, whereas larger blink latency shortening during task-relevant stimuli was found in both groups. Experiment 2 (N = 32) used only a task-relevant stimulus. Blink magnitude facilitation was significant only in the group presented with tones, whereas blink latency shortening was significant in both groups. Experiment 3 (N = 80) used a go/nogo task that required participants to press a button if one element of a compound stimulus ended before the second, but not if the asynchrony was reversed. The offset asynchrony was varied between groups as a manipulation of task difficulty. Startle magnitude facilitation was larger during acoustic than during visual stimuli and larger in the easy condition. The present data indicate that startle facilitation in a reaction time task is affected by stimulus modality and by task demands. The effects of the task demands seem to be independent of lead stimulus modality.

This study examined the effect of attention engagement to compound auditory-visual stimuli on the modification of the startle blink reflex in infants. Infants at 8, 14, 20, or 26 weeks of age were presented with interesting audiovisual stimuli. After stimulus onset, at delays defined by heart rate changes known to be associated with sustained attention or attention disengagement, blink reflexes were elicited by visual or auditory stimuli. Blink amplitude to either visual or auditory stimuli was enhanced when the infants were engaged in attention to the foreground auditory-visual stimuli relative to control trials with no foreground patterns. This enhancement of the blink amplitude increased from 8 to 26 weeks of age. In contrast to selective modality enhancement for single-modality foreground stimuli, these results show that these multimodal stimuli engage both visual and auditory attention systems in this age range.

The effects of fragrance on sexual response in women were investigated using subjective and physiological measures of sexual arousal and of mood. Responses were obtained from female participants in three different fragrance conditions (female fragrance, male fragrance, and a “blank” or neutral substance), as they viewed erotic and sexually neutral films, and fantasized about sexual situations. Each woman was tested twice: during the midfollicular and periovulatory phases of her menstrual cycle. Menstrual cycle phase effects were apparent; self-report data indicated greater sexual arousal and more positive mood during the periovulatory than during the follicular phase. Results demonstrated a positive effect of the male fragrance on genital arousal during erotic fantasy, but this finding was apparent only during the follicular phase testing session. This effect did not appear to be mediated by any effects of fragrance on mood.

If electrodermal activity is recorded with direct current, constant voltage and constant current measurements result in different dependencies of electrodermal reactions on the actual electrodermal level. The present study demonstrates empirically that such a problem does not exist when instead the phase angle changes between alternating current and voltage are obtained. Forty subjects were subjected to a 20-trial habituation series on two different occasions, in which electrodermal level variations were induced by room temperature changes. A multiplexing system was used to enable quasi-simultaneous constant current and constant voltage recording under both direct and alternating current measurement conditions. If the alternating current technique was applied and electrodermal responses were expressed as changes of phase angle between voltage and current, electrodermal recordings with constant voltage and with constant current provided equivalent results, even if electrodermal levels were considerably different. Therefore, using the phase angle method instead of the conventional direct current methods will finally resolve the problem of differential level dependency in electrodermal recording. A further advantage will be that electrode and skin polarization are prevented by the use of alternating current.

In the present study, we examined the stability of one measure of emotion, the emotion-modulated acoustic startle response, in an undergraduate sample. Using the acoustic startle paradigm on two different occasions, we measured stability of affective modulation of the startle response during and following the presentation of pictures selected to be of positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence. The two assessments were separated by 4 weeks. Two groups of subjects were compared: one group that viewed the same pictures at each assessment and a second group that viewed different pictures at the second assessment. We found that viewing different pictures at two assessments separated by 4 weeks yielded moderate stability of the emotion modulation of startle magnitude, whereas subjects who viewed the same pictures at both assessments showed poor stability. Furthermore, this difference was due to the stability of responses to high versus low arousal pictures, not to differences in valence.

The prediction that orienting response (OR) reinstatement is negatively related to the measure of common features, shared by the stimulus input and representations of preceding events, and positively related to the measure of their distinctive features, was examined. A nonsignificant test stimulus (TS) was presented after nine repetitions of a standard stimulus (SS), followed by two additional repetitions of SS. TS was created by either substituting 0, 1, or 2 components of SS (Experiment 1), or by either adding or deleting 0, 1, or 2 components of SS (Experiment 2). Skin conductance changes to TS (OR reinstatement) and the subsequent SS (dishabituation) were used as dependent measures. The results of Experiment 1 supported the prediction that substituting components of neutral stimuli affects OR reinstatement, with a larger effect for between-categories than within-categories substitution. Experiment 2 demonstrated that adding and deleting components similarly affects OR reinstatement.

In this study, we examined changes in the event-related potential (ERP) to stimuli with and without reproductive significance occurring during the menstrual cycle. Eleven spontaneously cycling women were tested during three menstrual phases (menses, ovulatory phase, luteal phase) differing in plasma concentrations of gonadal hormones. ERPs were recorded while subjects were presented with slides showing pictures from four different stimulus categories (sexual stimuli, babies, people occupied with body care, ordinary people). Slides were presented randomly in the context of two tasks, requiring either affective processing (i.e., to judge the emotional content of a slide as positive, neutral, or negative) or structural processing (i.e., to estimate the number of parallel thin lines inserted in each picture). Menstrual phase primarily affected a late positive component (LPC) peaking 550–600 ms poststimulus. The effects were as follows: (i) During the ovulatory phase, amplitude of the LPC to sexual stimuli was larger than that evoked by the other stimulus categories. (ii) This relationship was not apparent during the other menstrual phases or (iii) during the ovulatory phase when the task required structural processing. The ovulatory increase in LPC positivity to sexual stimuli suggests a greater valence of these stimuli during a phase of increased sexual desire. The data indicate a specific effect of the menstrual cycle on the processing of sexual stimuli that increases with deeper emotional processing.

Electrooculogram (EOG) correction is used to remove eye-movement-related contamination from electroencephalograms (EEG). Correction is reliant on the regression procedure, although when multiple EOG channels are used in the correction, the appropriate type of regression to use is not known. In the present study, we aimed to resolve this matter. Computer simulations were used to compare the simultaneous, multiple-stage, and single-channel regression methods of correction. EOG propagation was modeled on prior findings, under conditions of varying vertical and horizontal EOG (VEOG/HEOG) correlation. The dependent variable was the correlation between the uncontaminated and the corrected EEG. The simultaneous regression procedure gave the best correction, with its advantage increasing as a function of VEOG/HEOG correlation. It is recommended that the simultaneous regression procedure be used for EOG correction of the EEG.