Galvanic skin response orienting response as a measure of tactile discrimination in retarded children.

The GSR orienting reflex has been successfully applied to the measurements of normal and disordered tactile sensation and perception in nursery-school children, college students, and brain-injured adults. Because the technique eliminates practically all of the cognitive requirements of conventional measurement procedures, it provides a potential approach for measuring somato-perceptual abilities in the younger, language deficient, and more severely retarded child. In the present study the feasibility of the technique was evaluated by applying it to the discrimination of touches to the soles of the feet. In this simple discrimination, the retarded children performed as well as a control group of nonretarded children.