Emotionality and Heart Rate

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Emotionality and Heart Rate

• Greg Richards

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The Heart

• The heart is a four chambered organ.
• It Supplies blood with nutriments and oxygen to
  the tissues of the body as its main function.
• The four chambers are the right and left atria
  which are on the top and the right and left
  ventricles which are on the bottom.
• The ventricles pump the blood to the lungs and
  the rest of the body.
• The atria are the chambers that gets the blood
  that comes back to the heart from the veins.

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The Heart (contd)

• The right atrium receives blood from everything
  but the lungs.
• There are three veins that bring blood to the
  right atrium
• The superior vena cava brings the blood from the
  upper body.
• The interior vena cava brings the blood from the
  lower body.
• The coronary sinus blood brings the blood from
  the heart.
• Through the pulmonary artery blood goes from the
  right atrium to the right ventricle and then to
  the lungs.
• Oxygen is then added to the blood and carbon
  dioxide is removed.
• Through the pulmonary veins the blood goes back
  to the left atrium.
• Then the blood travels to the left ventricle and
  then is pumped to the rest of the body through
  the aorta.

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Electrocardiogram (ECG)

• The average human heart beats 72 times per minute
  and a little over 100,000 times per day.
• ECG is used to measure heart activity.
• It looks at whether the heart is functioning
  normally or if it has any abnormalities.
• Abnormalities could be skipped or extra
  heartbeats.
• Can show previous damage to the heart muscle,
  like a heart attack.
• It can detect conduction abnormalities and also
  give information on the physical condition of the
  heart.

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ECG (contd)

• When the heart contracts some of the electrical
  impulse spreads to the surface of the body.
• With this, when electrodes are then placed on the
  skin the electrical potentials can be recorded.
• These electrical potentials in the heart are
  recorded by the electrocardiograph.
• The electrocardiogram is the resulting
  measurement when these electrical potentials are
  amplified and recorded.

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ECG (contd)

• Willem Eintoven studied the electrical changes
  that occur when the heart contracts.
• Eintoven invented the string galvanmeter in 1901
  which he used to study these electrical changes.
• This device was quick enough to look at currents
  produced by the heart that were small and very
  rapid.
• Eintoven won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1924
  for his discovery.

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ECG Leads

• There are a few normal leads for ECG recordings.
• Normal electrocardiograms are recorded from three
  leads
• Lead 1, the electrodes are attached from the
  right to the left arm.
• Lead 2, the electrodes are attached from the
  right arm to the left leg.
• Lead 3, the electrodes are attached from the left
  arm to the right leg.

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Wave forms in ECG

• The waves in normal ECG were referred to as
  P,Q,R,S and T waves.
• An ECG tracing of a normal heartbeat has a P
  wave, a QRS complex, and a T wave.
• The P wave is small, and is produced by
  electrical currents.
• These currents occur right before atrial
  contraction.
• This is when the left and right atria contract at
  the same time.
• The QRS complex is caused by currents right
  before contraction of the right and left
  ventricles.

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Wave forms in ECG (contd)

• The R wave is the most important wave in the QRS
  complex.
• The R and S waves show contraction of the
  myocardium.
• The T wave shows repolarization of the
  ventricles.
• The T wave is usually positive, but when negative
  it can be a sign of disease.

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ECG

• The electrocardiogram has become very familiar
  with the general population it has come to
  signify strength and importance.

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Heart Activity, Attention, and the Orienting
Response
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Attention and the Body

• Attention refers to the act of focusing awareness
  on some aspect of stimulus situation
• Physiological changes accompany attention
• Heart rate slows briefly either before an
  expected event or following a significant, but
  unexpected occurrence

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Studies

• Jennings (1986)-situational characteristics that
  influence hear rate
• significance of the event to the person
  
• estimate of event occurrence must be fairly
  precise
• when anticipation ends deceleration stops
• detection difficulty enhances deceleration
• Found that decrease in heart rate is an indicator
  of initiation and termination of attention state
• Jennings capacity hypothesis HR deceleration
  indexes the holding of available capacity to
  perform mental operations on extended input
• Also HR acceleration indicates that processing
  capacity is allocated to ongoing mental and motor
  activities.

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Studies

• Depascalis Barry and Sparita (1995)
• Notion that HR deceleration reflects
  preparation that facilitate the intake of stimuli
  rather than response preparation
• Using a fixed period task that involved
  recognition of stimuli were able to find HR
  decreases in the time before the target stimulus
  and even greater decreases just before the onset
  of a signal that gave feedback about the
  subjects performance.
• Heart rate deceleration expresses stimulus
  processing rather than preparation to respond.

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Studies

• Lacey Lacey (1980)
• The decrease in heart rate enhances receptivity
  to new stimuli and improves response
  effectiveness
• Graham (1979)
• Interpreted Cardiac deceleration mainly in terms
  of enhancing the the input of stimuli
• Orbist (1981)
• Emphasized the decrease in motor activity that
  accompanies heart rate deceleration- heart rate
  is not a direct effect of attention, but an
  indirect result of quieting of motor
  activity-Incase of stimulus intake the drop in HR
  reflects the general somatic quieting observed
  in that kind of situation.

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Studies

• Graham and Clifton (1966)
• Using the hypothesis of Sokolov and Lacey on
  cardiac acceleration as a OR to a novel stimuli.
• Concluded that the OR response was accompanied by
  HR deceleration and that HR acceleration
  represents defense reaction to stimuli of pre
  pain intensity.
• Raskin Kotses Bever(1969)
• Experiment 30 male subjects receiving .5 secs of
  white noise at each level of stimulation- found
  that at 80-dB stimulus was interpreted as
  representing the OR whereas acceleration to the
  120-dB refelected a defensive reaction.

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Sleep

• Taylor Moldofsky and Furedy (1985)
• Hypothesized that if eye bursts during REM sleep
  represent orientation to dream content then HR
  deceleration should occur
• Found that decelerations preceded eye bursts in
  REM sleep. There is suggestive evidence that
  dream intensity is high during eye burst periods

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Unpleasant Stimulation

• Hare (1972)
• Gave slides of homocide victims to 49 college
  students to study HR response to unpleasant
  stimulation.
• 3 different types of responses, 9 showed
  acceleration, 12 showed deceleration, and the
  remaining 28 showed moderate deceleration
• Results support OR consists of hear rate
  deceleration and that the DR consists of Heart
  rate acceleration

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Spiders

• Hare (1973)
• Follow up study used Arachnophobia in study of 20
  subjects,10 who feared spiders and 10 who did not
• Subjects with spider fears had HR acceleration
  when viewing slides of spiders and those without
  showed deceleration
• Type of stimuli and the intensity are key factors
  when doing work with the OR and DR

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• Eves and Gruzelier (1984)
• Individual differences in response to high
  intensity tones (112dB-127dB)
• Initial Heart acceleration increased in one group
  but did not increase in another group of subjects
  showing differences in responses to certain
  stimuli
• Found that HR deceleration is associated with the
  OR and stimulus intake, whereas HR acceleration
  accompanies the DR and stimulus rejection

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Studies

• Spence Lugo and Youdin (1972)
• Study of persons listening to continuous verbal
  text found a decrease in Hr when they directed
  their attention to external stimuli
• Found congruence with the notion that attention
  to external stimuli results in cardiac
  deceleration

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• Ekman, Levenson, and Frieson (1983)
• -examined HR in association with facial
  expressions of various emotions such as fear,
  anger, disgust, sadness, happiness, and surprise.
  
• -participants were told exactly what muscles to
  contrast in order to create the appropriate
  facial expressions for each emotion
• -The results showed a greater change of HR with
  anger, fear, and sadness then with happiness and
  surprise.
• -Ekman concluded that voluntary contractions of
  facial muscles into expressions of emotion
  produced different physiological patters.

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• Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen (1990)
• -conducted four different follow up experiments
  that yielded the following results
• voluntary production of facially expressed
  emotions produced self-reports of that emotion
• there were physiological differences among the
  negative emotions of anger, disgust, fear, and
  sadness and positive emotions of happiness and
  surprise ( there was a larger increase of HR for
  anger, fear and sadness compared to disgust and
  surprise

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Frustration and Fear

• Rule and Hewitt (1971)
• -participants were asked to learn lists of verbal
  materials during sessions in which verbal
  reinforcement was provided by a peer
• -the participants were put into three different
  groups a difficult list of verbal materials with
  neutral comments, an easy list of verbal
  materials with neutral comments, and a difficult
  list of verbal materials with derogatory comments
• -the last condition, difficult list and
  derogatory comments, was considered high arousal
  because it involved both frustration and insult,
  where as the first two conditions were considered
  low arousal because it was only frustrating
• -the conditions did not differ in HR during
  learning sessions. However, they were allowed to
  administer electric shock to their peers who
  reviewed them and during this time only the large
  arousal condition showed an increase in HR

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• Klorman, Wiesenfeld, and Austin (1975)
• -participants HRs were measured while
  participants viewed fearful or neutral stimuli
• -they classified 32 women as either high or low
  in fear of mutilation
• -the subjects were then shown neutral photos
  (photographic poses), mutilation photos (burn and
  accident victims), and bizarre photos (a bald man
  with lemons attached to his ears).
• -the fearful subjects showed increases HR to
  mutilation slides, whereas the low-fear
  participants showed HR deceleration. While both
  neutral photos and bizarre photos showed HR
  deceleration.
• -Individual differences will determine whether HR
  will accelerate or decelerate in reaction to fear
  stimuli

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Reaction Time

• Lacey and Lacey (1977)
• -examined HR as a function of what time an
  imperative stimulus was presented in the cardiac
  cycle
• -they found the magnitude of HR deceleration
  depended on where in the cardiac cycle the
  signal was presentedif it occurred early (4th
  decile in the cycle) deceleration was much
  greater then if the signal came late (10th
  decile)
• -the Laceys attributed the HR deceleration to
  the action of the vagus nerve

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• Survillo (1971)
• -measured HR and RT of 100 healthy males in three
  different sessions
• -stimuli occurred at random times while
  participants HR and RT was measured
• -cardiac deceleration to stimuli was not observed
  under these conditions
• -the study indicated that HR slowing and RT were
  unrelated when stimuli were presented without
  regularity

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• HR deceleration occurs during the fixed fore
  period of an RT task
• When an RT task is performed under conditions in
  which HR is extremely manipulated, or without
  fixed fore period there is no HR deceleration
  prior to the response or directly after
• Unmanipulated HR deceleration is found in
  individuals who expect a significant stimulus