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Cardiovascular reactivity and adaptation to recurrent psychological stress: Effects of prior task exposure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2001

ROBERT M. KELSEY ,
JIM BLASCOVICH ,
JOE TOMAKA ,
CHRISTOPHER L. LEITTEN ,
TAMERA R. SCHNEIDER  and
STEFAN WIENS
ROBERT M. KELSEY
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA
JIM BLASCOVICH
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA
JOE TOMAKA
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at El Paso, USA
CHRISTOPHER L. LEITTEN
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Miami, FL, USA
TAMERA R. SCHNEIDER
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA Tamera R. Schneider's present address: Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
STEFAN WIENS
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA
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Abstract

The effects of prior task exposure on cardiovascular reactivity to stress were examined in two experiments by randomly assigning participants to repeated exposure groups that performed mental arithmetic pretest and test tasks versus delayed exposure groups that performed only the test task after prolonged rest. Impedance cardiographic and blood pressure measures were recorded continuously from 60 undergraduate men in Experiment 1 and 112 undergraduate men and women in Experiment 2. Task repetition attenuated cardiovascular reactivity and improved task performance in repeated exposure groups (p < .001), suggesting an integrated process of behavioral adaptation. During the test task, delayed exposure groups showed greater cardiac reactivity (p < .01), but not vascular reactivity, than repeated exposure groups. Thus, cardiac reactivity varied as a specific function of prior task exposure, whereas vascular reactivity varied as a general function of time.

Keywords

Cardiovascular reactivityPsychological stressNoveltyAdaptationHabituationImpedance cardiography
Type
Research Article
Information
Psychophysiology , Volume 36 , Issue 6 , November 1999 , pp. 818 - 831
Copyright
© 1999 Society for Psychophysiological Research

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