It can be used as an additional source of insight to validate self-reports, surveys, or interviews of participants within a study.Įxample GSR time course during an episode of “Breaking Bad” as visualized in iMotions. Skin conductance therefore offers direct insights into autonomous emotional regulation. Instead, it is modulated autonomously by sympathetic activity which drives aspects of human behavior, as well as cognitive and emotional states. Skin conductance is not under conscious control. The amount of sweat glands varies across the human body, but is the highest in hand and foot regions (200–600 sweat glands per cm2 ), where the GSR signal is typically collected from.
#GALVANIC SKIN RESPONSE GRAPH SKIN#
While sweat secretion plays a major role for thermoregulation and sensory discrimination, changes in skin conductance are also triggered robustly by emotional stimulation : the higher the arousal, the higher the skin conductance. This connection of emotional response to GSR signal has been explored in thousands of articles in the 120+ years since this seminal finding. Vigouroux was the first researcher to uncover a link between mental state and GSR activity, finding an association with the level of sedation in patients and skin resistance. The GSR signal is therefore not representative of the type of emotion, but the intensity of it. It is noteworthy that both positive (“happy” or “joyful”) and negative (“threatening” or “saddening”) stimuli can result in an increase in arousal – and in an increase in skin conductance. Research has shown how this is linked to emotional arousal. Our level of emotional arousal changes in response to the environment we’re in – if something is scary, threatening, joyful, or otherwise emotionally relevant, then the subsequent change in emotional response that we experience also increases eccrine sweat gland activity. (Contains 24 references.The galvanic skin response (GSR, which falls under the umbrella term of electrodermal activity, or EDA) refers to changes in sweat gland activity that are reflective of the intensity of our emotional state, otherwise known as emotional arousal. Graphs show: (1) GSR averages during print, video, and microcomputer use and (2) simple correlations of print, video, and microcomputer treatments with time. Two tables provide simple correlations of GSR data for each media condition with standardized test scores, and an analysis of variance summary. Print and microcomputer obtained relatively lower GSR responses initially, then matched the GSR response level of video after about 10 minutes, and continued to increase throughout the data collection period. Video obtained the highest GSR response initially, and GSR response remained constant throughout the 21-minute data collection period. Patterns of arousal with each media were identified by analysis of variance with repeated measures the patterns of response towards the print and microcomputer treatments were very similar, and both were dissimilar from the pattern of response for video. The higher achieving students obtained higher GSR values. Data for analysis consisted of standardized test scores and GSR measures a moderate positive relationship was shown between cumulative GSR and standardized test scores. Subjects received all three media treatments, in randomized order. This study considers the galvanic skin response (GSR) of sixth-grade students (n=20) using print, video, and microcomputer segments.