Detection of the Heartbeat and Events in the Cardiac Cycle.

Yates, Aubrey J.; Jones, Kathleen E.; Marie, Gregory V.; Hogben, John H.

In previous studies the heartbeat has been defined in terms of individual components of the cardiac cycle (e.g., the R-wave or the ventricular contraction) as specified by the experimenter, and subjects have been classified as nondetectors if they failed the task set by the experimenter. In this experiment 20 subjects were asked to judge whether a light flash occurring at one of six points within a single heart cycle was coincident with a heartbeat. It was found that the heartbeat was judged as being coincident with light flashes occurring between 200 and 400 ms after the R-wave more frequently than with flashes coincident with the R-wave or occurring 500 ms after it. There were marked individual differences in the patterns of responding indicating that a single criterion for heartbeat detection is not a satisfactory means of assessing detection ability.

HEART beat; INDIVIDUAL differences; PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY

Psychophysiology, 1985, Vol 22, Issue 5, p561

0048-5772

Academic Journal

10.1111/j.1469-8986.1985.tb01651.x