Premium
Self‐report of arousal as an indicant of activation level
Author(s) -
Dermer Marshall,
Berscheid Ellen
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830170503
Subject(s) - arousal , circadian rhythm , wakefulness , psychology , degree (music) , function (biology) , rhythm , statistics , biology , mathematics , electroencephalography , neuroscience , medicine , evolutionary biology , physics , acoustics
Activation level is typically assessed via the measurement of those physiological variables reputed to be activation indicants. To investigate the usefulness of self‐reports of arousal level as an alternative means of activation measurement, 51 S s made hourly reports of their subjective level of arousal while awake, across a four‐day span. A circadian rhythm (about 24 hours) was detected by inferential statistical methods. Additionally, while the 24‐hour chronogram depicting the self‐report time series may be approximated by a cosine function attaining a single maximal value, our analyses indicated a function attaining local maxima at 13:20 and 19:40 to be more accurate. The finding that both self‐report and physiological measures of arousal may be approximated by circadian functions which attain maximal levels during the middle of the wakefulness cycle suggests that self‐report as an activation indicant has some degree of construct validity and may be useful in the test of hypotheses requiring activation measurement of free ranging humans over temporally extended periods. It was also suggested that oral temperature may be a valuable but neglected activation indicant since the circadian variations in the present self‐report data and those in previously published oral temperature time series seem to be approximated by functions which share a 24‐hour periodicity and attain a maximal value at about 17:39.