Pk. Stein et Sh. Boutcher, HEART-RATE AND BLOOD-PRESSURE RESPONSES TO SPEECH ALONE COMPARED WITHCOGNITIVE CHALLENGES IN THE STROOP TASK, Perceptual and motor skills, 77(2), 1993, pp. 555-563
Heart-rate and blood-pressure responses are assumed to reflect the ''s
tressfulness'' of cognitive tasks. Cardiovascular responses to speech
are often assumed to be negligible. To test these assumptions, 34 midd
le-aged men (mean age 45.0 +/- 6.1) performed three versions of the St
roop color-conflict task, passive responding, push-button, and verbal.
Although difficulty of passive responding was rated 11.8 (fairly ligh
t), push-button 16.1 (between hard and very hard), and verbal Stroop 1
4.5 (hard), all were significantly different. Analysis of variance sho
wed during tasks heart-rate responses and systolic blood pressure did
not differ. Recovery average heart-rate and over-all heart-rate patter
ns were not different for the difficult tasks but were significantly d
ifferent from the easy task. Diastolic blood-pressure changes during t
asks were more similar for verbal tasks despite the difference in diff
iculty. Stressor heart-rate and systolic blood-pressure responses did
not reflect the difficulty of this stressful task. Verbalization of re
sponses contributed significantly to cardiovascular reactivity.