In the present study, we examined the stability of one measure of emotion, the emotion-modulated acoustic startle response, in an undergraduate sample. Using the acoustic startle paradigm on two different occasions, we measured stability of affective modulation of the startle response during and following the presentation of pictures selected to be of positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence. The two assessments were separated by 4 weeks. Two groups of subjects were compared: one group that viewed the same pictures at each assessment and a second group that viewed different pictures at the second assessment. We found that viewing different pictures at two assessments separated by 4 weeks yielded moderate stability of the emotion modulation of startle magnitude, whereas subjects who viewed the same pictures at both assessments showed poor stability. Furthermore, this difference was due to the stability of responses to high versus low arousal pictures, not to differences in valence.
Following reports on improved test-retest reliability of emotion-modulated startle during a 6-s picture presentation when different pictures are presented at each assessment (Larson et al., 2000) and data suggesting that brief picture presentations also elicit affective blink modulation (Codispoti, Bradley, & Lang, 2001), we assessed test-retest reliability of blink modulation during brief picture presentations. At two acoustic startle sessions (4 weeks apart) subjects viewed different IAPS pictures for either 6 s (long group) or 300 ms (short), with emotion modulation assessed at three different points in time during and following picture viewing. Group ANOVAs revealed emotion modulation for both short and long groups. In addition, comparable and, in some cases, greater stability of emotion modulation was found for short compared to long picture presentations. Stability was generally low for individual probe times for both groups.
In the present study, we examined the stability of one measure of emotion, the emotion-modulated acoustic startle response, in an undergraduate sample. Using the acoustic startle paradigm on two different occasions, we measured stability of affective modulation of the startle response during and following the presentation of pictures selected to be of positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence. The two assessments were separated by 4 weeks. Two groups of subjects were compared: one group that viewed the same pictures at each assessment and a second group that viewed different pictures at the second assessment. We found that viewing different pictures at two assessments separated by 4 weeks yielded moderate stability of the emotion modulation of startle magnitude, whereas subjects who viewed the same pictures at both assessments showed poor stability. Furthermore, this difference was due to the stability of responses to high versus low arousal pictures, not to differences in valence.
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