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Comparison of two penile measures of erotic arousal

1974; Elsevier BV; Volume: 12; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0005-7967(74)90010-2

1873-622X

Kurt Freund, Ron Langevin, David H. Barlow,

Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

The phallometric test, which makes possible measurement of penile responses to various stimulus configurations, was originally devised as a volumetric method (description of details: Freund. 1965: Freund et al., 1965). However. Bancroft et al. (1966) replaced volume measurement by circumference measurement, using basically a Whitney (1949) type strain gauge. A similar device for circumference measurement had already been used by Fisher et al. (1965) for the assessment of erectile activity cycles during sleep. Other strain gauges for penile circumference measurement have been designed by Jovanovic (1967a, b). Johnson and Kitching (1968) and Barlow et al. (1970) and with the exception of McConaghy (1967) and Barr (1973), apparently all the authors who currently work with the phallometric test of erotic preference use circumference measurement instead of volume measurement. This substitution seems to imply that penile volume changes are closely parallelled by circumference changes, an assumption which may be warranted for gross penile responses but which may not hold at all for responses in the range of mild sexual arousal. Under these circumstances direct comparison of both kinds of measurement appeared to be necessary.