title: Masked affective stimuli moderate task difficulty effects on effort-related cardiovascular response.
abstract: This experiment investigated the combined effect of masked affective stimuli and task difficulty on effort-related cardiovascular response. Cardiovascular reactivity (ICG, blood pressure) was recorded during a baseline period and performance of an easy or difficult attention task in which participants were exposed to masked sad vs. happy facial expressions. As expected, participants in the sad-faces/easy and happy-faces/difficult conditions showed stronger sympathetic nervous system discharge to the heart and vasculature--shorter preejection period, higher systolic blood pressure--indicating more effort than participants in the sad-faces/difficult and happy-faces/easy conditions. Total peripheral resistance reacted similarly as preejection period and systolic blood pressure. The findings are compatible with the effects of consciously experienced affect on effort-related cardiovascular response.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. nicolas.silvestrini@unige.ch
authors: Nicolas
authors: N
authors: Silvestrini
authors: Guido H E
authors: GH
authors: Gendolla
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*