title: Auditory startle response in blind subjects.
abstract: Blindness is often associated with hypervigilance and arousal. The auditory startle response has been suggested as a measure of arousal. This study evaluated the auditory startle response of 10 blind individuals and 10 sighted controls who were exposed to a series of 15 1000-Hz, 95-db, 0-rise-time pure-tone stimuli, administered to both ears. The subjects' heart-rate, skin-conductance, and orbicularis-oculi-electromyogram responses to the tones were measured. Blind subjects did not differ from controls in the magnitude and in the habituation-rate of their responses. Results were interpreted as showing that blind persons' capacity for discriminative learning and for regulation of arousal is unimpaired. Task-related anxiety of blind persons should be differentiated from stimulus-related anxiety.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bachar
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Peri
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Halamish
authors.forename: A Y
authors.initials: AY
authors.lastname: Shalev
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001766:Blindness / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D013216:Reflex, Startle