Psychophysiological Responsiveness to Psychological Stress in Early Chronic Schizophrenic Reactions

with schizophrenia is that the schizophrenic is emotionally unresponsive—that his reactions to stimulation from the external environment are dampened or blunted. Prominent investigators in this area 2-7i 10 have related this so-called emotional unresponsiveness to frequent find-ings of low physiological reactivity. However, experimental evidence supporting this hypoth-esis is hardly clear since the literature also reports normal physiological reactivity1- 3i 5i 6 and in some cases4 ' 8 '9-12 hyperactivity to stresses in schizophrenics. Lack of unanimity in this area appears to stem from a number of sources of variation such as inadequately de-fined and unstandardized methods of stimula-tion, inattentiveness to differential diagnosis and stage of the illness and lack of comparison with adequate controls. Of even greater perti-nence may be the character of the stimulating situation. For instance, it may be of consider-able consequence whether the stimulating sit-uation is primarily a physical one such as a loud sound or a psychological one such as sharp criticism over a poor performance.14 Moreover, there may be a high degree of dif