eventually cease. When novel stimuli have an associated contextual significance, repeated stimulus will still result in a sequentially decreasing OR, though at a modified rate of decay. Orienting in decision-making The orienting response is believed to play an integral role in preference formation. When faced with deciding between two options, subjects in studies by Simion & Shimojo were shown to choose the items they preferentially orient their gaze toward. This gaze can occur while the stimulus is present or after it has been removed, the latter causing gaze to be fixated at the point in which the stimulus had been present. Gaze bias ceases following a decision, suggesting that gaze bias is the cause of preference and not its effect. Noting this postulated causal link with the irrelevance of a stimulus presence, it is argued that gaze orientation supports decision-making mechanisms in inducing a preferential bias. Role between emotion and attention Both novelty and significance of a stimulation are implicated in the generation of an orienting response. Specifically, the emotional significance of a stimulus, defined by its level of pleasantness, can affect the intensity of the orienting response toward focusing attention on a subject. Studies showed that during exposure to neutral and emotionally significant novel images, both pleasant and unpleasant images produced higher skin conductance readings than neutral images. With repeated stimulation, all skin conductance readings diminished relative to novel introduction, though with emotionally significant content diminishing more slowly. Conversely, studies observing cardiac deceleration during novel stimuli introduction showed significantly more deceleration for unpleasant stimuli compared to pleasant and neutral stimuli. These findings suggest that OR represents a combination of responses that act in tandem to a common stimulus. More importantly, the differences between emotionally charged and neutral stimuli demonstrates the influence of emotion in orienting attention, despite novelty. In relation to therapy The orienting response has been posited as being stimulated by bilateral stimulation, and being the active ingredient in Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. In popular culture In his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore posited that watching television affects the orienting response, an effect similar to vicarious traumatization. See also Information metabolism Browsing Perception Attention Interest (emotion) References 6. Sokolov E N, Spinks J A, Naatanen R, Lyytinen H (2002) The Orienting Response In Information Processing. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Mahwah, New Jersey. London. Neurophysiology Physiology Behavioral concepts