Relaxation and skin conductance feedback in the control of reactions to cognitive tasks

Scrutinizing the Emotional Nature of Intuitive Coherence Judgments

Dual‐system models propose that cognitive processing can occur either intuitively or deliberately. Unlike deliberate decision strategies, intuitive ones are assumed to have an emotional component attached to the decision process. We tested if intuitive decisions are indeed accompanied by an emotional response while deliberate decisions are not. Specifically, we conducted a psychophysiological study in which participants were instructed to decide either intuitively or deliberately if three simultaneously presented words were semantically coherent or incoherent (triad task). The degree of emotionality of these two decision strategies (intuitive vs. deliberate) was compared using changes in electrodermal activity (EDA) and the reaction time (RT) effect of an affective priming paradigm as primary measurements. Based on a valence‐arousal model, our results revealed that intuitive and deliberate judgments do not differ as to their emotional valence but that they do differ in emotional arousal. Most notably, sympathetic activation during intuitive judgments was significantly lower compared to sympathetic activation during deliberate judgments. Our results reflect that a relaxed state of mind—manifested in low sympathetic activity—could underlie the holistic processing that is assumed to facilitate the proliferation of semantic associations during coherence judgments. This suggests that coherence judgments made under an (instructed) intuitive decision mode have a specific psychophysiological signature and that arousal is the differentiating component between intuitive and deliberate decision strategies. © 2016 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

A complementary method for detecting qi vacuity

BACKGROUND

Qi vacuity (QV) is defined by traditional Chinese medicine as a loss of energy in the human body. An objective method for detecting QV was not available until recently, however. The automatic reflective diagnosis system (ARDK) is a device that detects human bioenergy through measuring skin conductance at 24 special acupoints on the wrists and ankles.

METHODS

This study used the ARDK to measure skin conductance on 193 patients with QV and 89 sex- and age-matched healthy controls to investigate whether the device is useful in detecting QV. Patients diagnosed with QV have three or more of five symptoms or signs; symptom severity is measured on 5 levels and scored from 0 to 4 points. We compared the difference in the mean ARDK values between patients with QV and healthy controls, and further used linear regression analysis to investigate the correlation between the mean ARDK values and QV scores in patients diagnosed with QV.

RESULTS

The mean ARDK values in patients with QV (30.2 +/- 16.8 microA) are significantly lower than those of healthy controls (37.7 +/- 10.8 microA; P < 0.001). A negative correlation was found between the mean ARDK values and QV scores (r coefficient = -0.61; P < 0.001). After adjusting for age, the decreased mean ARDK values in patients with QV showed a significant correlation with the QV scores.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that the mean ARDK values reflect the severity of QV in patients diagnosed with the disorder. They also suggest that the bioenergy level of the human body can be measured by skin conductance. ARDK is a safe and effective complementary method for detecting and diagnosing QV.