V.I. Mirgorodsky, V.V. Dementienko, V.V. Gerasimov, S.V. Peshin, V.B. Dorokhov

Recording autonomic indices such as heart rate, respiration rate, winking, electrodermal activity etc., allows us to assess non-specific features of social interaction associated with emotional and activation components. The means of recording these indices facilitate easier measurements compared to tomography and electroencephalography; however, in the available sources we have not found any studies involving the recording of autonomic indices in the course of joint activities of the subjects. These methods were only used to study inter-individual variations when socially meaningful stimuli were repeatedly presented to one subject. Recording electrodermal EDA provides a number of advantages compared to other indicators of autonomic nervous system activation. First of all - the reliable extraction of the EDR signal in response to a single stimulus not requiring a large number of summations critical for psychophysiological studies related to rare situations, and the occurrence of meaningful stimuli of endogenous origin. Second, it was proven that EDR occurrence is mostly related to informational, emotional and other non-somatic components of body activation. Finally, the eccrine sweat glands determining the genesis of EDR are known to have purely sympathetic innervation, unlike the other organs featured by combined sympathetic and parasympathetic innervations. Our study was aimed at assessing the efficiency of phasic EDR for analysis of paired activity in terms of joint perception of a video film (in the available sources we found no studies involving simultaneous recording of EDRs of two persons). The objective was to assess the efficiency of EDR in identifying variability of perception between individuals in the course of collective watching of video films. To do this, analysis of the EDR signals correlation of all participants viewing the same video film was performed. For comparative assessment of inter-individual variability, the intra-individual variability of two subjects in the course of repeated viewing of the same video film has been analyzed. Two video materials (feature films) were used as stimuli. 19 individuals were tested, 10 males and 9 females, aged 26 to 75. EDR from two subjects was recorded simultaneously using two channels of a single recorder. Recording of the EDA was performed according to the Fere method, i.e. skin resistance to current below 10 μA applied between two electrodes located on a finger was measured. Data processing provided for calculating the correlation between EDR signals recorded in different experiments.