Vigilance to a persisting personal threat: unmasking cardiovascular consequences in adolescents with the Social Competence Interview.
We report the first systematic study of hemodynamic responses to the Social Competence Interview, using the original Ewart protocol, which focuses attention on a persisting personal threat. Physiologic changes in 212 African American and Caucasian urban adolescents during the Social Competence Interview, mirror tracing, and reaction time tasks showed that the Social Competence Interview elicits a pronounced vasoconstrictive response pattern, with diminished cardiac activity, that is more typical of alert mental vigilance than of active coping. This pattern was observed in all race and gender subgroups. Results suggest that the Social Competence Interview may be a broadly useful procedure for investigating the role of threat-induced vigilance in cardiovascular and other diseases.
Center for Health and Behavior, Department of Psychology, Syracuse University, NY 13244-2340, USA. cewart@psych.syr.edu
Craig K
CK
Ewart
Randall S
RS
Jorgensen
Kerstin E
KE
Schroder
Sonia
S
Suchday
Andrew
A
Sherwood
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D044383:Black People; D005260:Female; D006439:Hemodynamics / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012919:Social Behavior; D014481:United States; D044465:White People; D001741:Black or African American