Diurnal variations of tonic electrodermal activity

Diurnal variability of skin conductance level (SCL) was examined in two complementary experiments, simultaneously with variability of skin temperature (ST) and that of simple reaction time (RT) which was recorded as a behavioural index of arousal, In Experiment I, 6 subjects spent 6 days in the laboratory in homogeneous conditions. Three recording sessions, each lasting 2 h, began, respectively, at 9:00 a.m. (morning), 1:00 p.m. (afternoon) and 5:00 p.m. (evening). Results indicated that SCL increased linearly throughout the day. Experiment II was undertaken to test whether this effect could still be observed in more heterogeneous conditions. Subjects (n = 12) attended to their own activities between the two 30-min sessions beginning, respectively, at 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. during a single experimental day. Again, SCL was higher in the evening than in the morning. In both experiments the SCL pattern seemed to be asynchronous with ST and RT variations. Taken as a whole, these data bring additional evidence of temporal electrodermal variation, a phenomenon which should be further taken into account in EDA research. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.