Differences in autonomic physiological responses between good and poor inductive reasoners

We investigated individual- and task-related differences in autonomic physi ological responses induced by time limited figural and verbal inductive rea soning tasks. In a group of 52 participants, the percentage of correctly re sponded task items was evaluated together with nine different autonomic phy siological response measures and respiration rate (RR). Weighted multidimen sional scaling analyses of the physiological responses revealed three under lying dimensions, primarily characterized by RR, parasympathetic, and sympa thetic activity. RR and sympathetic activity appeared to be relatively more important response dimensions for poor reasoners, whereas parasympathetic responsivity was relatively more important for good reasoners. These result s suggest that poor reasoners showed higher levels of cognitive processing intensity than good reasoners. Furthermore, for the good reasoners, the dim ension of sympathetic activity was relatively more important during the fig ural than during the verbal reasoning task, which was explained in terms of hemispheric lateralization in autonomic function. (C) 2001 Elsevier Scienc e B.V. All rights reserved.