[Sympathetic skin response and emotional changes of visual stimuli]

We studied sympathetic skin response (SSR) to visual emotional stimuli in 11 normal children and 13 normal adults. The arousal and valence levels of original pictures were previously assessed by 20 normal children and adults. SSR appearance ratio tended to be high for pictures with high arousal and those with either high or low valence, and was higher in children than in adults. The response for pictures with high arousal and low valence was different between children and adults. These pictures were classified into 2 groups; one consisted of disgusting creatures such as worms and roaches, and another of violent scenes, symbolizing physiological and social unpleasure, respectively. In children, SSRs were evoked with the same ratio for these two groups of pictures. In adults, however, SSRs for social unpleasure pictures were evoked with a significantly higher ratio compared to those for physiological ones. These results indicate that children are more susceptible to emotional stimuli and that this susceptibility diminishes with development, suggesting the association between emotional signal and moral development.