Social evaluation influence on cardiovascular response to a fixed behavioral challenge: effects across a range of difficulty levels

Perceptions of task difficulty predict cognitive effort for older adults

This study examined age differences in effort devoted to completing cognitively demanding tasks. Fifty-two younger adults ages 18-30 years (Mage = 21.19) and 57 older adults ages 61-93 years (Mage = 76.56) completed a series of memory tests. Following each test, participants rated the test's difficulty and had their blood pressure measured. Effort was indexed by systolic blood pressure response (SBP-R) with greater increases in SBP-R reflecting more effort. Multilevel modeling was used to examine age differences in the intraindividual association between trial-level subjective task difficulty and trial-level effort. Results showed that increases in task difficulty were significantly related to decreases in SBP-R for the older but not younger adults, suggesting the older adults disengaged from the tests they perceived as highly difficult. Findings support Selective Engagement Theory (Hess, 2014), which suggests the perceived cognitive costs of completing difficult tasks may reduce older adults' motivation to engage in the tasks.

Working hard but not tired? The influence of task valuation on mental fatigue, effort investment, and task performance

It has been demonstrated in previous studies that prolonged mental effort exertion evokes mental fatigue and leads to impairments in task performance. In the current investigation, we aimed to test the hypothesis that mental fatigue depends on motivational processes and can be influenced by task valuation. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated the value of the task by financial rewards (Study 1) and the sense of autonomy (Study 2). Contrary to our predictions, those manipulations did not influence the main dependent variables. We also introduced additional rewards after prolonged effort exertion. In line with our expectations, the results showed that mental fatigue increases with time spent on effortful tasks. Importantly, however, mental fatigue decreases when the value of the task rises. This effect is accompanied by stronger effort engagement and improvement in task performance. The findings support the motivational theories of mental effort and fatigue, showing that mental fatigue might serve as a signal of diminishing value of the ongoing task.

Fatigue influence on inhibitory control: Cardiovascular and performance findings elucidate the role of restraint intensity

Various papers have detailed an analysis of behavioral restraint that provides suggestions regarding fatigue influence on inhibitory control. A well-known limited resource model by Baumeister suggests that fatigue should directly impair it. By contrast, the behavioral restraint analysis suggests-first-that fatigue might affect control indirectly by impacting the intensity of restraint. Second, fatigue should impair control consistently only when it leads people to withhold restraint effort. We evaluated these suggestions in an experiment that presented participants a task designed to induce low- or high- mental fatigue and then challenged them to maintain a neutral facial expression while watching a more- or less emotionally evocative film clip. As expected, cardiovascular assessments during the facial restraint period revealed interactional response patterns indicative of opposing fatigue influence on restraint intensity under low- as compared to high-evocativeness conditions. Also as expected, fatigue combined with evocativeness to produce a three versus one pattern of inhibitory control operationalized in terms of the duration of non-neutral facial displays. Control failure increased with evocativeness only when fatigue was high and increased with fatigue only when evocativeness was high. Findings support the restraint analysis suggestions, extend results from previous research, and bear out the promise of the restraint analysis for advancing understanding of inhibitory control.

Affect and cognitive control: Insights from research on effort mobilization

We present theory and research on effort mobilization that is relevant for understanding the role of affect in cognitive control. We posit that cognitive control and effort are closely related and introduce motivational intensity theory and supporting empirical evidence mainly based on cardiovascular measures of effort. Most important, we discuss the role of affect in the context of effort mobilization and cognitive control from different perspectives. We first present theories predicting affective influences on effort, namely the mood-behavior-model and the implicit-affect-primes-effort model, and supporting empirical evidence. Second, we discuss further implications of the resource conservation principle highlighting the aversive aspect of effort and review evidence for the impact of value and its affective component on effort and cognitive control. Finally, we present a recent integration of the neural mechanisms underlying both effort and cognitive control. We conclude that affective processes are necessary and instrumental for both effort mobilization and cognitive control.

Social-evaluative threat, cognitive load, and the cortisol and cardiovascular stress response

BACKGROUND

Current evidence suggests that exposure to social-evaluative threat (SET) can elicit a physiological stress response, especially cortisol, which is an important regulatory hormone. However, an alternative explanation of these findings is that social-evaluative laboratory tasks are more difficult, or confer greater cognitive load, than non-evaluative tasks. Thus, the current experiment tested whether social-evaluative threat, rather than cognitive load, is truly an "active ingredient" in eliciting a cortisol response to stressors.

METHODS

Healthy undergraduate students (N = 142, 65% female) were randomly assigned to one of four speech-stressor conditions in a fully-crossed two (social-evaluative threat [SET] manipulation: non-SET versus SET) by two (cognitive load manipulation: low versus high) stressor manipulation. Social-evaluative threat was manipulated by the presence (SET) or absence (non-SET) of two evaluators, while cognitive load was manipulated by the presence (LOAD) or absence (non-LOAD) of a tone-counting task during the speech stressor. Salivary cortisol and cardiovascular measures were taken before, during, and after the speech stressor.

RESULTS

Compared to the non-SET condition, SET condition led to greater cortisol and cardiovascular responses to the speech stressor. There were no main or additive effects of cognitive load on cortisol and cardiovascular responses to the speech stressor.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that social-evaluative threat is a central aspect of stressors that elicits a cortisol response; however we found no evidence that increased difficulty, or cognitive load, contributed to greater cardiovascular or cortisol responses to stressors.

Autonomic Nervous System Responses to Hearing-Related Demand and Evaluative Threat

PURPOSE

This paper consists of 2 parts. The purpose of Part 1 was to review the potential influence of internal (person-related) factors on listening effort. The purpose of Part 2 was to present, in support of Part 1, preliminary data illustrating the interactive effects of an external factor (task demand) and an internal factor (evaluative threat) on autonomic nervous system measures.

METHOD

For Part 1, we provided a brief narrative review of motivation and stress as modulators of listening effort. For Part 2, we described preliminary data from a study using a repeated-measures (2 × 2) design involving manipulations of task demand (high, low) and evaluative threat (high, low). The low-demand task consisted of repetition of sentences from a narrative. The high-demand task consisted of answering questions about the narrative, requiring both comprehension and recall. During the high evaluative threat condition, participants were filmed and told that their video recordings would be evaluated by a panel of experts. During the low evaluative threat condition, no filming occurred; participants were instructed to "do your best." Skin conductance (sympathetic nervous system activity) and heart rate variability (HRV, parasympathetic activity) were measured during the listening tasks. The HRV measure was the root mean square of successive differences of adjacent interbeat intervals. Twelve adults with hearing loss participated.

RESULTS

Skin conductance increased and HRV decreased relative to baseline (no task) for all listening conditions. Skin conductance increased significantly with an increase in evaluative threat, but only for the more demanding task. There was no significant change in HRV in response to increasing evaluative threat or task demand.

CONCLUSIONS

Listening effort may be influenced by factors other than task difficulty, as reviewed in Part 1. This idea is supported by the preliminary data indicating that the sympathetic nervous system response to task demand is modulated by social evaluative threat. More work is needed to determine the relative contributions of motivation and emotional stress on physiological responses during listening tasks.

Aging and effort expenditure: The impact of subjective perceptions of task demands

Engagement in cognitively demanding activities has a positive impact on cognitive health in older adults. Previous work, however, has suggested that the costs associated with engagement increase in later life and influence motivation. We examined how subjective perceptions of these costs varied with age and influenced task engagement. The following questions were of specific interest: (a) Are there age differences in subjective perceptions of cognitive costs? (b) What is the impact of these perceptions on engagement? We tested 39 older (ages 65-84) and 37 younger (20-42) adults on a working memory task. Systolic blood pressure responsivity (SBP-R; reflective of effort) and subjective perceptions of task difficulty were assessed. We found that age was associated with an increase in the perceptions of cognitive costs, and that these subjective perceptions had a stronger impact on older adults' engagement than on that of younger adults. More important, this impact was specific to subjective perceptions of cognitive costs. The results provide further support for the hypothesis that increased costs associated with cognitive engagement influence older adults' willingness to engage cognitive resources, and that these costs in part reflect subjective perceptions that are independent of objective task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record

Assessment of Adult Age differences in Task Engagement: The Utility of Systolic Blood Pressure

The constructs of effort and engagement are central to many theoretical frameworks associated with the study of aging. Age differences in the effort associated with effortful cognitive operations have been hypothesized to account for aging effects in ability, and shifting goals and motivation have been hypothesized to be associated with differential levels of engagement across situations in younger and older adults. Unfortunately, the assessment of effort and engagement-constructs that we view as relatively synonymous-has suffered in the field of aging due to the lack of well-validated measures. We suggest that systolic blood pressure might provide an easy and valid means for examining age differences in mental effort, and present evidence in support of its usage. Existing findings clearly support its potential utility, but further empirical and theoretical work is necessary.

The impact of age and motivation on cognitive effort: implications for cognitive engagement in older adulthood

We examined age differences in the effort required to perform the basic cognitive operations needed to achieve a specified objective outcome, and how hypothesized increases in effort requirements in later life are related to intrinsic motivation associated with enjoyment of and participation in effortful cognitive activities. Young (N = 59; 20-40 years) and older (N = 57; 64-85 years) adults performed a memory-search task varying in difficulty across trials, with systolic blood pressure responsivity-calculated as the increase over baseline during task performance-used as a measure of effort expenditure and task engagement. Consistent with expectations, older adults exhibited greater levels of responsivity (i.e., effort) at all levels of objective task difficulty, and this increase was reflected in subjective perceptions of difficulty. Older adults also exhibited greater levels of disengagement (i.e., effort withdrawal) than younger adults at higher levels of task difficulty, conceivably reflecting the disproportionately greater effort required for successful performance in the former group. We also found that, relative to younger adults, older adults' engagement was more sensitive to the importance attached to the task (i.e., motivation to do well). Finally, we also obtained evidence that increased costs associated with cognitive engagement in later life were negatively associated with intrinsic levels of motivation to engage in effortful cognitive activity. The results support the general conclusion that the costs of cognitive activity increase with age in adulthood, and that these costs influence individuals' willingness to engage resources in support of demanding cognitive activities.

Gender determination of effort and associated cardiovascular responses: when men place greater value on available performance incentives

Participants were presented an easy or difficult mental addition task and led to believe that they could win a traditionally masculine incentive by meeting a certain performance standard. As expected, blood pressure and heart rate responses during the work period were stronger under difficult conditions than easy ones among men but low under both difficulty conditions among women. Findings support the suggestion from a conceptual analysis grounded in motivation intensity theory that gender differences in cardiovascular response could be partially understood in terms of effort processes that occur where men and women place different value on available performance incentives.

Do agonistic motives matter more than anger? Three studies of cardiovascular risk in adolescents

OBJECTIVES

Three motivational profiles have been associated with recurring psychological stress in low-income youth and young adults: Striving to control others (agonistic striving), striving to control the self (transcendence striving), and not asserting control (dissipated striving). Agonistic striving has been associated with elevated ambulatory blood pressure during daily activities. Three studies tested the hypotheses that: (1) agonistic striving is associated with poor anger regulation, and (2) agonistic striving and poor anger regulation interactively elevate blood pressure.

DESIGN

Motivational profiles, anger regulation, and ambulatory blood pressure were assessed in a multiethnic sample of 264 urban youth.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

(1) anger regulation/recovery during laboratory challenge; (2) anger/blood pressure during daily activities (48 hours).

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

Replication of the profiles in distant cities showed they occur with similar frequency across differences of region, race, and gender. Analyses controlling for body size, race, and gender revealed that individuals with the agonistic striving profile had higher ambulatory pressure, especially during social encounters. They became more openly angry and aggressive when challenged but did not exhibit difficulty regulating anger in the laboratory, nor did they feel angrier during monitoring. However, individuals with the agonistic striving profile who did display poor anger regulation in the lab had the highest blood pressure; deficient self-regulatory capability amplified the positive association between agonistic striving and cardiovascular risk in both genders and all ethnic groups. Although anger is thought to increase cardiovascular risk, present findings suggest that anger and elevated blood pressure are coeffects of agonistic struggles to control others.

The effects of the spontaneous presence of a spouse/partner and others on cardiovascular reactions to an acute psychological challenge

The presence of supportive others has been associated with attenuated cardiovascular reactivity in the laboratory. The effects of the presence of a spouse and others in a more naturalistic setting have received little attention. Blood pressure and heart rate reactions to mental stress were recorded at home in 1028 married/partnered individuals. For 112 participants, their spouse/partner was present; for 78, at least one other person was present. Women tested with a spouse/partner present showed lower magnitude systolic blood pressure and heart rate reactivity than those tested without. Individuals tested with at least one nonspousal other present also displayed attenuated reactivity. This extends the results of laboratory studies and indicates that the spontaneous presence of others is associated with a reduction in cardiovascular reactivity in an everyday environment; spouse/partner presence would appear to be especially effective for women.

Cardiovascular reactivity during performance under social observation: The moderating role of task difficulty

An experiment with N=40 university students investigated the impact of social observation on cardiovascular reactivity during performance on a computer-based letter detection task. The study was conducted in a 2 (social observation: no vs. yes)x2 (task difficulty: easy vs. difficult) between-persons design. In accordance with engagement-related predictions about the role of social observation in active coping, the mere presence of an experimenter who observed participants during task performance increased the reactivity of systolic blood pressure when the task was difficult, but not when the task was easy. Without social observation, reactivity was modest in both the easy and the difficult conditions. Reactivity of diastolic blood pressure described the same pattern as systolic blood pressure. Results are interpreted as evidence for an effort-related analysis of cardiovascular reactivity based on the principles of motivational intensity theory.

Effects of trait dominance on psychological and cardiovascular responses to social influence attempts: the role of gender and partner dominance

This study investigated the influence of trait dominance on cardiovascular reactivity to and recovery from a dyadic interaction task requiring active social influence attempts. Thirty-six male and 36 female normotensive high-school students characterized as either high or low in trait dominance engaged in a mixed-gender discussion with a high or low dominant partner. Trait dominance substantially influenced cardiovascular reactivity to the interpersonal stressor. High dominant participants displayed higher increases in systolic blood pressure (SBP) and pulse pressure (PP), but lower diastolic elevations than low dominant participants. The difference in diastolic reactivity was particularly pronounced in females. Recovery from stress was influenced by level of partner dominance. Participants interacting with a dominant partner showed delayed diastolic recovery. The observed cardiovascular effects seem to reflect greater task engagement and efficient coping in dominant subjects. Group differences in cognitive task appraisals and affective experiences are consistent with this interpretation. Differences in psychological responding were not found to mediate the relation between trait dominance and cardiovascular responses, however.

Vigilance to a persisting personal threat: unmasking cardiovascular consequences in adolescents with the Social Competence Interview

We report the first systematic study of hemodynamic responses to the Social Competence Interview, using the original Ewart protocol, which focuses attention on a persisting personal threat. Physiologic changes in 212 African American and Caucasian urban adolescents during the Social Competence Interview, mirror tracing, and reaction time tasks showed that the Social Competence Interview elicits a pronounced vasoconstrictive response pattern, with diminished cardiac activity, that is more typical of alert mental vigilance than of active coping. This pattern was observed in all race and gender subgroups. Results suggest that the Social Competence Interview may be a broadly useful procedure for investigating the role of threat-induced vigilance in cardiovascular and other diseases.

Cardiovascular correlates of challenge and threat appraisals: a critical examination of the biopsychosocial analysis

In this article we examine critically the biopsychosocial (BPS) challenge versus threat analysis proposed by Blascovich and his coworkers. We conclude that the BPS analysis should be viewed with considerable caution. We conclude this in part because the analysis is associated with notable problems, including (a) its conception of demand, (b) its definitions of goal-relevant and evaluative situations, (c) its assertion regarding primary and secondary appraisal determinants of challenge and threat, and (d) its cardiovascular (CV) predictions. We conclude this as well because BPS analysis studies have not made a compelling empirical case. BPS analysis studies are unpersuasive because (a) their CV results are only partially consistent with BPS analysis predictions, (b) they have compared CV responses of groups bearing an uncertain relationship to the primary and secondary appraisal criteria specified for the production of challenge and threat effects, (c) they have not compared challenge and threat appraisals between challenge and threat groups, and (d) they provided data that are incomplete. Theoretical modifications and additional research could make a better case for the BPS view.

Vigilance, active coping, and cardiovascular reactivity during social interaction in young men

This study of 72 undergraduate men examined the effects of two determinants of cardiovascular response-active coping and vigilance-on blood pressure and heart rate responses to social stressors. Observation of a future debate partner (i.e., vigilance) evoked larger increases in blood pressure than did observation of a less relevant person, apparently through the combination of increases in cardiac output and vascular resistance. Preparation and enactment of efforts to exert social influence (i.e., active coping) evoked heightened blood pressure and heart rate responses through increased cardiac contractility and output. Thus, both vigilance and active coping in social contexts increased cardiovascular reactivity, but apparently through different psychophysiological processes.

Cardiovascular stress responses and their relation to symptoms in Gulf War veterans with fatiguing illness

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to examine whether inappropriate cardiovascular responses to stressors may underlie symptoms in Gulf War veterans with chronic fatigue.

METHODS

Psychophysiological stress testing was performed on 51 Gulf War veterans with chronic fatigue (using the 1994 case definition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and 42 healthy veterans. Hemodynamic responses to cold pressor, speech, and arithmetic stressors were evaluated using impedance cardiography.

RESULTS

Veterans with chronic fatigue had diminished blood pressure responses during cognitive (speech and arithmetic) stress tests due to unusually small increases in total peripheral resistance. The cold pressor test, however, evoked similar blood pressure responses in the chronic fatigue and control groups. Low reactivity to cognitive stressors was associated with greater fatigue ratings among ill veterans, whereas an opposite relation was observed among healthy veterans. Self-reported neurocognitive decline was associated with low reactivity to the arithmetic task.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest a physiological basis for some Gulf War veterans' reports of severe chronic fatigue. A greater deficit with responses processed through cerebral centers, as compared with a sensory stimulus (cold pressor), suggests a defect in cortical control of cardiovascular function. More research is needed to determine the specific mechanisms through which the dissociation between behavioral and cardiovascular activities identified in this study may be contributing to symptoms in Gulf War veterans.