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Stimulus-Response and Individual-Response Specificity
BERNARD T. ENGEL, Ph.D.
AMA Arch Gen Psychiatry 1960;2(3):305-313.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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There has been an increasing interest among psychophysiologists in the question of how physiological response systems are organized. Some investigators have argued that autonomically mediated responses to stimulation are determined by the quality of the stimulus, whereas others have argued that the responses are idiosyncratic, i.e., independent of the stimulus and unique to the responder. A great deal of confusion has resulted from the fact that this issue has been phrased as an either-or question. The present study is an attempt to show that autonomic response patterns are a function of both stimulus and subject.
The issue is to a great extent confounded with the more general psychological problem of stimulus definition. If a stimulus is defined as that which the experimenter manipulates, then, obviously, all variations in responses occurring during repetitions of the stimulus must be attributed to changes within the individual subjects. If, on the
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
Chicago With the Technical Assistance of Paul Cekan
Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research and Training, Michael Reese Hospital.
Footnotes
Submitted for publication Sept. 6, 1959.
Now at Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco 22.
This research was supported in part by funds made available through the State of Illinois Mental Health Fund No. 1711 and by Research Grant M-1442 of the National Institute for Mental Health, U.S. Public Health Service.
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