A SCR investigation of the Perruchet effect (2)

This study aimed to determine whether the conditioned stimulus (CS) in the electrodermal version of the Perruchet effect is instrumental to the production of said effect. In the Perruchet effect a single stimulus (the CS) is paired with a second stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus, US) on half the trials and on the other half of the trials the US is not presented. Conditioned responding to the CS is typically found to dissociate from conscious expectancy for the US. In this experiment the US is an electric shock and the conditioned response is change in skin conductance response (SCR). Importantly there is no CS in this experiment. If the CS is important in the production of the Perruchet effect then removal of the CS in this experiment should distort SCR, whereas if the CS is not important then a similar SCR pattern should be produced to that seen in previous Perruchet experiments.

本研究旨在探究佩鲁谢效应（Perruchet effect）皮电范式中的条件刺激（conditioned stimulus，CS）是否对该效应的产生具有关键作用。在佩鲁谢效应范式中，半数试次会将单个刺激（即条件刺激CS）与第二个刺激（即非条件刺激US）配对呈现，剩余半数试次则不呈现非条件刺激US。通常而言，对条件刺激CS的条件性反应，会与个体对非条件刺激US的主观预期出现分离。本实验中的非条件刺激US为电击，条件性反应则为皮肤电反应（skin conductance response，SCR）的变化。值得注意的是，本实验未设置条件刺激CS。若条件刺激CS对佩鲁谢效应的产生至关重要，则移除CS的本实验中，皮肤电反应SCR的模式会出现异常；反之，若条件刺激CS并非关键因素，则本实验得到的SCR模式应与既往佩鲁谢效应实验中的结果相似。