Sex differences in latencies of bilateral electrodermal responses

The present study examined sex differences in the latencies of bilateral electrodermal responses to stimuli presented in monocular vision. The stimuli were spatial-emotional, verbal-emotional, spatial-neutral and verbal-neutral slides, presented for either 35 ms or 1 s. Subjects were 15 males and 15 females. Bilateral latencies were not influenced by type of stimulus or by right/left hemisphere stimulation, which is in keeping with the most recent findings of bilateral electrodermal activity studies. However, females gave a faster right hand than left hand response and appeared to be more lateralized than males. Males showed shorter latencies on the left hand than on the right. These results confirm the importance of gender in experiments using the bilateral recordings of electrodermal activity.