title: Pay attention to your manipulation checks! Reward impact on cardiac reactivity is moderated by task context.
abstract: Two experiments assessed the moderating impact of task context on the relationship between reward and cardiovascular response. Randomly assigned to the cells of a 2 (task context: reward vs. demand) x 2 (reward value: low vs. high) between-persons design, participants performed either a memory task with an unclear performance standard (Experiment 1) or a visual scanning task with an unfixed performance standard (Experiment 2). Before performing the task--where participants could earn either a low or a high reward--participants responded to questions about either task reward or task demand. In accordance with the theoretical predictions derived from Wright's (1996) integrative model, reactivity of pre-ejection period increased with reward value if participants had rated aspects of task reward before performing the task. If they had rated task demand, pre-ejection period did not differ as a function of reward.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, 40, Bd. du Pont-d'Arve, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland. Michael.Richter@unige.ch
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Richter
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology; D002320:Cardiovascular Physiological Phenomena; D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012201:Reward; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult