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CHANGES IN ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAM AND OTHER PHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES DURING SERIAL MENTAL PEREORMANCE
Author(s) -
MacNeilage Peter F.
Publication year - 1966
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1966.tb02664.x
Subject(s) - electroencephalography , psychology , audiology , task (project management) , skin conductance , alpha (finance) , neuroscience , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , psychometrics , medicine , construct validity , management , biomedical engineering , economics
This study attempted to answer two questions: (1) Can electroencephalogram (EEG) amplitude changes be related to specific moment‐to‐moment changes in task performance? (2) To what extent are EEG changes related to changes in other indices of activation? Physiological responses were recorded from 20 subjects during 12 alternately fast and slow trials of a paced auditory serial addition task and three writing trials involving similar responses. Trial‐by‐trial results showed that EEG amplitude usually tended to covary with other physiological functions in a manner expected from activation theory. All physiological levels decreased during the session but became increasingly sensitive to differences in task difficulty. Within trials there was some concordance between alpha amplitude levels and other physiological levels, but exceptions to this trend and further analysis of palmar conductance patterns suggested that consideration of differential sensitivities of the individual measures to behavioral events might be more profitable than an activation theory approach. The only relation between EEG changes and specific behavioral events was the tendency for alpha and beta to block during motor responses.