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| Copyright 1999 by the | Psychology in Spain, 1999, Vol. 3. No 1, 54-62 |
| Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos |
|
Individual differences associated with cardiac defence response: psychophysiological and personality variables. The aim of this work was to analyse individual differences associated with the cardiac components of the defence reflex. 144 subjects underwent a psychophysiological reactivity test. During the test some psychophysiological measures (heart rate, finger pulse amplitude, respiratory period and amplitude and respiratory sinus arrhythmia amplitude) and self-report measures (subjective reactivity to sounds, anxiety, anger and Type-A behaviour pattern) were simultaneously recorded. We found that: (a) a cluster analysis applied to changes in heart rate differentiated two groups of subjects, one that presented the typical cardiac defence response pattern and another that did not; (b) a discriminant analysis indicated that the variable that best discriminates the two groups is sinus arrhythmia amplitude.
El objetivo del trabajo fue analizar las diferencias individuales asociadas a los componentes cardíacos del reflejo de defensa. 144 sujetos realizaron una prueba de reactividad psicofisiológica. Durante la prueba se recogieron diversas medidas psicofisiológicas (tasa cardíaca, amplitud del pulso digital, amplitud y período respiratorio, y amplitud de la arritmia sinusal respiratoria) y de autoinforme (reactividad subjetiva a los sonidos, ansiedad, ira y patrón tipo-A). Encontramos que: (a) un análisis de cluster, aplicado a los cambios en la tasa cardíaca, diferenció dos grupos de sujetos, uno que presentaba el patrón típico de la respuesta cardíaca de defensa y otro que no; (b) un análisis discriminante indicó que la variable que mejor discrimina a los dos grupos es la amplitud de la arritmia sinusal.
The original Spanish version of this paper has been previously published in Psycotema, 1999, Vol 10 No3, 609-621
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Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to María Nieves Pérez Marfil. Facultad de Psicología. Universidad de Granada. 18071 Granada . Spain E-mail: nperez@platon.ugr.es
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