COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIVITY TO AUDITORY STIMULATION WITH AUTOMOBILE HORNS

자동차 경적소리에 대한 심리생리학적 반응 비교

Automobile horn's psychoacoustic characteristic and significance as a anturalistic signal of danger makes it a valuable auditory stimulus to study such psychophysiological responses as startle, orienting and defense reactions. However, comparison and differentiation of physiological responses to commercially available horns is a complicated task due to small contrast of technical features of horns and influence of such processes as habituation on physiological outcome with increased number of auditory stimulation trials. In the study on 10 college students we performed comparative analysis of tonic and phasic reactivity of physiological responses mediated by autonomic nervous system in order to identify role of habituation and decrement of autonomic responsivity, as well as possibility o differentiate subjectively most and least preferred and subjectively more appropriate horns according to physiological manifestations. It was showed that electrodermal and cardiovascular reactivity have concurrent patterns of adaptation to repeated stimulation, namely skin conductance variables habituated, cardiac reactivity failed to show signs of habituation, while vascular component of response were facilitated demonstrating marked sensitization. Differentiation of Physiological responses to horns with respect to their subjective rating scores was possible, however electrodermal reactivity was effective only at the first block of trials, while phasic and tonic cardiovascular reactivity differentiate responses during whole course of experiment. There are discussed possible autonomic mechanisms involved in mediation of observed results.