THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE SKIN-CONDUCTANCE AND FINGER PULSE AMPLITUDE COMPONENTS OF THE ORIENTING RESPONSE TO SEASON OF BIRTH IN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND DEPRESSION

Schizophrenia is said to be associated with a modest excess of winter births. We examined relations of season of birth (SOB) to the skin con ductance response (SCR) and finger pulse amplitude response (FPAR) com ponents of the orienting response (OR) in 83 schizophrenic patients, 5 9 depressed patients, and 81 normal controls. SCR-OR nonresponding was more prevalent among depressed patients regardless of SOB, whereas on ly winter-born schizophrenics showed significantly more frequent elect rodermal nonresponding than controls. However, this latter relation wa s not confirmed with log linear analysis. No other relations of SOB to SCR-OR or FPAR-OR nonresponding were significant. Our data do not sup port the view that nonresponding in the SCR or FPAR components of the OR is associated with winter birth either in schizophrenia or depressi on.