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9 - Measuring the Electromyographic Startle Response: Developmental Issues and Findings

from SECTION TWO - AUTONOMIC AND PERIPHERAL SYSTEMS: THEORY, METHODS, AND MEASURES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2009

By
Marie T. Balaban  and
W. Keith Berg
Edited by
Louis A. Schmidt  and
Sidney J Segalowitz
Marie T. Balaban
Affiliation:
Professor of Psychology Eastern Oregon University
W. Keith Berg
Affiliation:
Professor of Psychology University of Florida
Louis A. Schmidt
Affiliation:
McMaster University, Ontario
Sidney J Segalowitz
Affiliation:
Brock University, Ontario
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

A sudden noise occurs while you are concentrating and you respond quickly and automatically – your body muscles flex, your eyes blink, and your facial expression registers a grimace of surprise. You have just experienced a startle reflex. The startle reflex (or startle response) is commonly measured in research studies by a blink response in humans, elicited by some startling stimulus such as a loud noise. The blink response is an early and reliable component of startle in humans. It occurs to stimuli in various sensory modalities (e.g., auditory, visual, cutaneous) and often begins within 30 ms after the onset of a sudden and intense stimulus.

The word “reflex” often seems to bring to mind a stable, simple, and unchanging response elicited under specific circumstances. But in the case of the startle reflex, this view is overly simplistic. Though this reflex can be reliably elicited, it turns out to also be highly modifiable by an extensive variety of stimuli, circumstances, and clinical conditions. The wide range of studies examining this process of modification is generally referred to as startle modification research. Fundamentally, the paradigms employed in this research involve situations in which the startle reflex is modulated or modified in amplitude, latency, or probability by another non-startling variable of interest. The remarkably wide range of factors that can modify startle is what has generated such a broad interest in its study.

Type
Chapter
Information
Developmental Psychophysiology
Theory, Systems, and Methods
 , pp. 257 - 285
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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References

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