Glossary // Glossary term Technical
Skin conductance response
A brief, phasic increase in the electrical conductance of the skin, typically beginning one to a few seconds after a stimulus, that reflects sympathetically driven sweat gland activity. It is distinguished from the slowly changing skin conductance level, and both are components of electrodermal activity. Skin conductance responses index arousal and orienting to novel or significant events, but they occur for pleasant, unpleasant and neutral stimuli alike and do not indicate which emotion, if any, a person is experiencing. Affective computing promises to infer emotion as if it were a system metric. The evidence on facial movements and autonomic signals, together with questions of consent, explains why every metric in this artifact is an artistic value. How one could reason about recording a catharsis-like change of state: signals, features, inference and context, baselines, self-report, error costs and ethics, and why every step stays uncertain. Nothing on this site measures anyone. The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at. (2012). Electrodermal activity. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-1126-0 Supports technical statements about how electrodermal activity is recorded and what it indexes. Expert synthesis, not a test of any single claim.Where the site uses it
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