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- Title
Individual Differences in Phasic Cardiac Reactivity to Psychological Stress and the Law of Initial Value.
- Authors
Scher, Hal; Furedy, John J.; Heslegrave, Ronald J.
- Abstract
The validity, of the law of initial value (LIV), which predicts relationships between prestimulus level and phasic response, was evaluated for two cardiac measures, heart rate (HR) and electrocardiographic T-wave amplitude (TWA). HR acceleration and TWA attenuation were produced in undergraduates by the performance of the backward digit span task. The between-subjects correlations of prestimulus level with the magnitude of the phasic responses were significant, with signs opposite to that which would be predicted by the LIV. The within-subjects prestimulus level-phasic response correlations, however, were consistent with the LIV. It appears that individual differences in psychologically-elicited phasic cardiac reactivity negate LIV predictions. These results emphasize the importance of sharply distinguishing the between- vs. within-subjects formulations of the LIV, and are contrary to recent psychophysiology textbook accounts of the prestimulus level-phasic response relationship for cardiac variables.
- Subjects
HEART beat; RESPONSE set; ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHY; PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY; PHYSIOLOGY; CARDIAC contraction
- Publication
Psychophysiology, 1985, Vol 22, Issue 3, p345
- ISSN
0048-5772
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1469-8986.1985.tb01612.x