The Startle Pattern

by Carney Landis, William A. Hunt, Hans Strauß

"An extensive study was made of the startle pattern in white, black, adult, infantile, juvenile, hypnotic, normal, epileptic, psychotic, feeble-minded, neurologically diseased, and drugged subjects and in animals, as elicited by various stimuli, particularly sound, and recorded by moving-picture cameras permitting high-speed photography. They found the startle pattern to be universal in occurrence, permanent in character, a complex, almost invariable, involuntary, innate reflex response, obeying all the conventional laws of simple reflexes, subject to conditioning, probably organized high in the midbrain, influenced indirectly by catatonic and hypnotic and other special states, and distinct in character from the Moro reflex."

168 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939