Subjective risk and associated electrodermal activity of a self-driving car passenger in an urban shared space
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289913
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Summary
The provided text is a technical guide titled "A Guide for Analysing Electrodermal Activity (EDA) & Skin Conductance Responses (SCRs) for Psychological Experiments," authored by researchers from the University of Birmingham, University of Warwick, and Biopac. It is not a research paper reporting original empirical findings, but rather a methodological manual designed to assist non-expert researchers in acquiring, processing, and analyzing EDA data using Biopac MP36R hardware and AcqKnowledge software. The guide addresses the complexities of measuring autonomic arousal through skin conductance, distinguishing between tonic components (Skin Conductance Level, or SCL) and phasic components (Skin Conductance Responses, or SCRs). It emphasizes that EDA is a sensitive index of sympathetic arousal linked to emotional and cognitive states. The document provides specific technical recommendations for data acquisition, advising a minimum sampling rate of 2000 samples per second (2 kHz) to ensure millisecond accuracy when linking physiological responses to experimental stimuli. It also recommends specific gain settings (x1000 to x2000) and highlights the importance of computer hardware capabilities to prevent data loss during high-throughput recording. Methodologically, the text details procedures for quantifying both tonic and phasic EDA. For SCL, it warns against simple averaging due to contamination by SCRs and suggests subtracting SCR amplitudes or using relative differences across conditions. For phasic ER-SCRs, it defines standard latency windows (1–3 seconds post-stimulus) and amplitude thresholds (typically 0.01–0.05 µS). The guide stresses the necessity of visual inspection to distinguish between artifacts, such as signal drift, and meaningful physiological shifts. It further outlines data transformation techniques, differentiating between normalization (correcting for skew/kurtosis using log or square-root transformations) and standardization (correcting for inter-individual variance using Z-scores or range-corrected scores). The significance of this document lies in its role as a standardized protocol for psychophysiological research. By providing clear, step-by-step instructions for setup, analysis, and statistical preparation, it aims to improve the reliability and comparability of EDA studies. The guide addresses common controversies in the field, such as the calculation of baseline SCL and the handling of individual differences, offering evidence-based recommendations to help researchers avoid common methodological pitfalls. It serves as a practical primer for ensuring that EDA data are collected and analyzed with sufficient precision to support valid psychological interpretations.
Key finding
Subjective collision-risk ratings in a simulated shared-space AV passenger scenario were dominated by pedestrian-vehicle proximity (safety margin) and crossing order (in front vs behind the vehicle); electrodermal responses tracked subjective ratings more than the manipulated crossing factors alone.
Methodology
simulator
Sample size: 27
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via tag_papers on 2026-05-30.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-03 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-07 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-06 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 16 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes, physiological data
- Theoretical Contribution: computational model