Age differences in characteristics of the attention process of electrodermal activity during auditory stimulation.

Age differences in characteristics of the attention process of electrodermal activity during passive and active listening tasks were studied with 43 nursery and 49 primary school children and 38 university students. The procedure included baseline recording, a passive listening task, instruction, and an active listening task. Significant differences in skin conductance response (SCR) were found among the three age groups. The SCR became smaller for the groups of increasing ages only for the active listening task. As the trials progressed, there was a trend in the three age groups for decreasing SCR amplitude during the passive listening task.