Effects of Autonomic Arousal Level, Sex and Frustration on Performance

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of initial heart rate level (Drive), sex and frustration on symbol-matching performance. Low (LD), moderately low (MLD), moderately high (MHD), and high (HD) heart-rate Ss worked on a modified digit-symbol problem before and after a frustration or no-frustration manipulation which raised heart rate on the average 20.6 and 2.96 beats/minute respectively. The results show that MHD and HD Ss complete significantly more matches initially than LD and MLD Ss by manifesting both shorter response and inter-trial interval latencies. Furthermore, frustration induced autonomic arousal facilitates performance improvement for LD and MLD Ss and decelerates performance improvement for MHD and HD Ss. Frustration-induced arousal exerts this effect by altering response latency only. No sex differences were observed.