PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIVITY AND HEARTBEAT AWARENESS IN ANXIETY SENSITIVITY

Anxiety sensitivity refers to the degree to which an individual fears symptoms of anxiety because of beliefs about anxiety's aversive conseq uences. Heart-rate reactivity and sensitivity to physiology were inves tigated in 59 female undergraduate participants. It was predicted that compared to women with low anxiety sensitivity, women with high anxie ty sensitivity would exhibit higher heart rates and greater cardiac aw areness during a mental arithmetic and caffeine manipulation. Women hi gh on anxiety sensitivity were significantly more accurate at counting heartbeats during arithmetic than women low on anxiety sensitivity, a lthough absolute heart rate did not differ across groups. Self-report data for caffeine-induced physical sensations support the use of caffe ine challenge tasks in future research on anxiety sensitivity.