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RESEARCH PRODUCT

How can skin conductance responses increase over trials while skin resistance responses decrease?

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It is shown that the opposite trends over trials for conductance and resistance response magnitudes that have been found in recent experiments can be explained entirely by the mathematical relationship between conductance and resistance. Two conditions have to be satisfied for such opposite trends to occur: (1) a substantial increase in conductance level over the course of an experiment, and (2) a certain increase in conductance response magnitudes. The opposition in trends, being due solely to the mathematical relationship between conductance and resistance, should not be eliminated by some “correction” procedure. Instead, conductance should be taken as the appropriate variable. Also, no correction should be made for the correlation between conductance level and conductance response magnitude, since it reflects psychological processes rather than a biological level dependency.