Effect of exteroceptive feedback in controlling electrodermal activity in pre-conditioned fears

Ss with a strong fear of snakes were taught to increase and decrease their skin resistance during practice sessions with a continuous visual display. Ss were not aware that they were increasing or decreasing their levels of skin resistance and attempted only to influence the magnitude of the multimeter display, the polarity of which was controlled by the experimenter. The study used a within-subjects reversal design to investigate whether bidirectional control could be acquired over skin resistance level. To investigate whether this acquired control could affect the magnitude of elicited pre-conditioned autonomic responses, a pre- and post-training comparison was made between the GSRs elicited during test sessions in which Ss viewed slides of snakes while attempting to influence their electrodermal activity with the assistance of the visual display. The results suggest that Ss are able to acquire voluntarily bidirectional control of their level of skin resistance with continuous visual feedback and that this control can either depress or facilitate the magnitude of pre-conditioned emotional responses as a function of visual feedback.