title: Somatic responses in behavioral inhibition.
abstract: In the present study, skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured postdecision and prefeedback in a go/no-go (GNG) task in which participants used response feedback to learn when to respond or not to respond to numeric stimuli. Like somatic markers in gambling tasks and somatic reactions to error monitoring in choice reaction time tasks, SCR patterns distinguished between correct and incorrect trials over time. These somatic reactions were disrupted by a reversal of GNG contingencies, and they were facilitated by pretraining of the stimulus-response mappings. In all cases, however, the somatic reactions appeared to be a product of competent decision making rather than a contributor to performance. Differential somatic responses to good and bad choices appear to be a robust and fairly general phenomenon, but researchers should be cautious in assuming that the somatic responses contribute to performance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4820, USA. pwhitney@wsu.edu
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Whitney
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hinson
authors.forename: Aaron
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wirick
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Holben
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012016:Reference Values