HEART-RATE AND BLOOD-PRESSURE RESPONSES TO SPEECH ALONE COMPARED WITHCOGNITIVE CHALLENGES IN THE STROOP TASK

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.