Development of skin conductance orienting, habituation, and reorienting from ages 3 to 8 years: A longitudinal latent growth curve analysis YU GAO, a ADRIAN RAINE, b MICHAEL E. DAWSON, a PETER H. VENABLES, c and SARNOFF A. MEDNICK a a Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA b Departments of Criminology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylavania, USA c Department of Psychology, University of York, York, England Abstract Little is known about the development of the skin conductance orienting response (SCOR) in childhood. This lon- gitudinal study examines the effects of age on initial SCOR, habituation, and reorienting. Skin conductance responses to nonsignal auditory stimuli were recorded from 200 male and female children at five different time points (ages 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 years). Longitudinal latent growth curve analyses were used to determine the trajectory of each SCOR measure during this period. Results indicated that (a) initial SCOR is present at age 3, increases thereafter to peak at age 6, and then levels off, (b) habituation is absent at age 3, but becomes apparent at age 4 years and increases thereafter with increasing age, (c) SC reorienting is absent from ages 3 to 8, and (d) boys and girls do not exhibit different devel- opmental trajectories. Results suggest that from age 3 to 8 years, the transition from the functionally immature to mature neural network underlying orienting and habituation is a continuous process and may be related to children’s cognitive development during this period. Descriptors: Skin conductance, Orienting, Habituation, Reorienting, Child development, Age, Latent growth curve modeling The orienting response (OR) is elicited by novel environmental stimuli and functions to adapt the body to the rapidly changing environment (O ¨ hman, Hamm, & Hugdahl, 2000; Pavlov, 1927). According to O ¨ hman’s (1979) information processing perspec- tive, novel stimuli are initially stored in short-term memory, where they form neural templates. When subsequent stimuli are presented, they are compared to the template currently stored in short-term memory. If the stimulus differs from the template, preattentive processing mechanisms are unable to recognize the newly presented stimulus and will require additional, controlled processing mechanisms, resulting in the OR. In contrast, if the incoming stimulus matches the template, an OR does not occur because the stimulus is relatively familiar and nonsignificant. The OR has two characteristics: It displays an amplitude decrement (habituation) with stimulus repetition as a result of the match between incoming stimulation and the template stored in short- term memory, but is reevoked (reorienting) by any detectable change in one of several parameters, including intensity, modal- ity, and semantic meaning of the stimulus (O ¨ hman et al., 2000). The skin conductance orienting response (SCOR) is an au- tonomic response to nonsignal stimuli and indirectly reflects how a person attends to and processes novel environmental stimuli (Dawson, Schell, & Filion, 2007). In adults, reliable relationships between the SCOR and arousal, attention, information process- ing, and emotion have been observed from numerous studies (for a review, see Hugdahl, 1995). Although the amplitude of the SCOR to nonsignal stimuli has been interpreted as a sensitive measure of information processing, surprisingly little is known about the development of the SCOR (Shields, 1983; and, for a review, see Venables, 1980). Results concerning the SCOR in infants and children are somewhat inconsistent. For example, Crowell, Davis, Chun, and Spellacy (1965) reported SCOR to auditory clicks (5 Hz at 50 dB) in the neonate, arguing that orienting was in place in humans as early as the first 24 h after birth. In contrast, other studies have indicated that infants show a SCOR only to limited stimuli, such as a doorbell, threat of loss of balance (chair tipping), and sudden withdraw of support (for a review, see Fowles et al., 2000). As for age-related changes in childhood, Janes, Hesselbrock, and Stern (1978) reported that from age 6 to 12 years, younger children were more electroder- mally responsive than older children on a variety of processes, including conditioning, habituation, and spontaneous respond- ing between trials. In a study with a broad range of age groups The initial data collection was made possible by grants to Peter H. Venables from the Medical Research Council (UK) and the Wellcome Trust (UK). This study was also supported by grants to Adrian Raine from NIH (Independent Scientist Award K02 MH01114 and RO1 AA10206). We thank all the local members of the Mauritius Joint Child Health Project for help with data collection. Address reprint requests to: Yu Gao, Department of Psychology, SGM 501, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089- 1061, USA. E-mail: yugao@usc.edu Psychophysiology, 44 (2007), 855–863. Blackwell Publishing Inc. Printed in the USA. Copyright r 2007 Society for Psychophysiological Research DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00564.x 855