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Cardiac Responses in Aversive Situation With and Without Avoidance Possibility
Author(s) -
Malcutt Gérard
Publication year - 1973
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.1469-8986.1973.tb00527.x
Subject(s) - psychology , aversive stimulus , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , stimulus (psychology) , shock (circulatory) , passivity , social psychology , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , medicine , computer science , artificial intelligence , electrical engineering , engineering
This experiment is concerned with evaluating the cardiac responses of human S s in an aversive situation. Two main conditions were investigated: Control of shock occurrence (Avoidance) and Passivity, that is, S s were instructed to passively receive the shocks. Sixty S s were used. The Avoidance condition was further divided into 3 specific groups. One group of S s had to avoid the aversive stimulus by a proper task (depressing keys) without any certainty about the result of their action until the habitual moment of shock occurrence. S s in a second group were provided immediate feedback from their action via a light bulb. A third group of S s kept receiving shocks whatever they tried. After completion of 30 trials the conditions for each S s were reversed by appropriate instructions and run for another 20 trials. A decelerative cardiac response was found in anticipation of shock for S s in the Passivity condition. In the Avoidance condition, such a deceleration was found for trials during which S s had had a feedback of their failure to avoid (second group) and were expecting an oncoming shock. Furthermore, only the S s in Avoidance condition displayed HR acceleration after the signal onset of the ISI. Specific variations were found in the second phase of the experiment for the third group of Avoidance condition.