Individual Characteristics of Stress Responding During Psycho- Physiological Research Using a Polygraph

The paper considers the inuence of subjects' individual-typological dierences onphysiological characteristics of responding during a polygraph test. The authors evaluated: 1) the properties of the nervous system (strength, balance, and mobility) using the method of the complex visual-motor reaction; 2) character individual differences using the test of character accentuations (K. Leonhard – G.Shmishek); 3)parameters of vegetative reactions of the subjects (the skin's electrical activity, upper and lower breathing, cardiovascular activity, and tremor) using a “POLARG-M” professional computer polygraph with “Femida” software. In the study with the use of a polygraph the authors applied the following methods: stimulus-adapting test (SAT), test of general control questions (TGCQ), and test on knowledge of the perpetrator (TKP). The study involved 30 respondents at the age from 18 to 24. The study showed that the respondents with the highest scores of the strength ofthe nervous system were able to successfully pass the polygraph test. The “anxiety–emotivity” characterological complex inuenced the amplitude of the positive and negative half waves in the channel of the skin's electrical activity. The study demonstrated the conceptual possibility of the dierentiation of the subjects' responding caused byanxiety or the signicance of a stimulus; this may help in avoiding false accusations. According to the authors, dierent ways of responding to stress can form individual forms of physiological reactions. Thus, the concept of individual symptom complex asaunique set of parameters of physiological reactions to subjectively signicant stimuli isthe most important.