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subjects, along with the normal controls reported the
expected changes in verbal report of emotion, it can not be
assumed that subjects perceived the emotional situation
accurately. At the end of each 10-trial block, the
experiment asked the subjects to rate their experiences by
asking "When you heard the high tone, and you knew you were
going to get a shock, how did you feel on this scale..."
Using this method, it is unclear whether subjects reporting
their actual subjective experiences during the situation or
whether they were reported what they are "expected" to feel.
Moreover, since the subjects were not required to
respond in any way, it is unclear whether they were able to
distinguish each tone on a trial by trial basis. However,
all subjects were able to distinguish the pairs of tones
before the onset of the experimental trials. Since subjects
were not required to respond in any way to insure that they
interpreted each anticipatory trial accurately, it is
unclear whether the LHD and RHD subjects clearly understood
the emotional context of the shock condition and reward
conditions. As a consequence, the decrease SCRs in the RHD
group and in most of the subjects from the LHD group, may be
reflective of their inability to perceive the situation
accurately on a trial by trial basis.
A second possiblity is that brain damage, in general,
causes a decrease in SCR during expected emotional arousal.
This explanation is unlikely in light of the previous