INFLUENCE OF SLEEP LABORATORY ADAPTATION ON SKIN POTENTIAL RESPONSES

In the present study was investigated whether or not changes in spontaneous skin potential response (SPR) during sleep could be used as an indicator of psychophysiological activity. During the natural nocturnal sleep over 3 consecutive nights, 15 males entirely inexperienced in this type of experiment were observed with respect to the laboratory adaptation in terms of objective measures of EEG as well as of subjective measures using the rating-scale method and the questionnaire method. In addition changes in spontaneous SPR on the finger and on the dorsal hand were investigated during the adaptation process due to the laboratory effect. The following summary is based on the comparisons between the first and the third night results. 1. From the EEG profile, shortened latencies of sleep onset (stage 1), and of para-sleep, decreased relative duration of stage 1 and 2, and an increase duration of stage 4 were observed, and the findings confirmed the laboratory adaptation phenomenon (Table 1 & 2). 2. The subjective evaluation immediately after awakening revealed : i) disappearance of difficulty in falling asleep, ii) improvement in the feeling of a sound sleep and refreshed feeling after awakening, and iii) disappearance of the tendency of overestimating sleep latency. These results confirmed those in terms of the objective measures (Fig. 1 & 2). © 1969, The Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.