THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CARDIOVASCULAR REACTIVITY AND HEARTBEAT DETECTION

This experiment tested the hypothesis that inotropic cardiovascular re activity to stress is related to performance on heartbeat discriminati on tasks. The experiment also compared the efficacy of a specific modi fication of two popular heartbeat discrimination paradigms, Whitehead' s and Katkin's. Subjects were 48 male undergraduates who performed bot h discrimination tasks and then were subjected to mental arithmetic st ress. Results indicated that high cardiovascular reactors were better detectors than low reactors. Results also indicated that subjects perf ormed better on the modified Whitehead task than on the modified Katki n task.