Trait affective differences influence behavioral flexibility in virtual spatial and non-spatial discrimination tasks

Cardiovascular reactivity during sadness induction predicts inhibitory control performance

Higher negative affectivity has an association with decreased executive function and cognitive control. Heart rate variability (HRV) serves as an index of cardiac vagal regulation differences in the autonomic nervous system for both cognition and emotion. The current study investigates this association using a classic as well as emotional antisaccade paradigm to study inhibitory control performance. Ninety participants completed affective questionnaires (Beck Depression Inventory-II, and Mood Scale), a 6-minute baseline electrocardiogram, and two different antisaccade tasks. After the baseline, subjects were presented with a video sequence with either neutral, sad, or emotionally arousing content. By subtracting the baseline from the video sequence, we computed HRV reactivity and tested whether the reactivity score could predict inhibitory control performance. We hypothesized that this would be the case in both the sadness and arousal group, but not in the neutral one. Furthermore, we awaited significant performance differences between experimental groups. Contrary to our assumption, inhibitory control performance did not differ between experimental groups. Moreover, there was no significant relation between affective measures and task performance. Nevertheless, cardiovascular reactivity in terms of HRV was predictive of error rates in both antisaccade tasks in the sadness group. We could find this effect neither in the neutral nor in the arousal group. In addition, BDI scores moderated the effect in the emotional task. Results indicate that emotional reactivity to a sad video stimulus as indexed by HRV as well as the interaction with current emotional state predict inhibitory control performance.

Baseline heart rate variability (HRV) and performance during a set-shifting visuospatial learning task: The moderating effect of trait negative affectivity (NA) on behavioral flexibility✰

Higher negative affectivity (NA) has an association with decreased executive function and cognitive control. Heart rate variability (HRV) may index cardiac vagal regulation differences in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) for both cognition and emotion. The current study investigates this association using a set-shifting variant of the Virtual Morris Water Task (VMWT) to study discrimination learning, spatial learning, reversal learning, and attentional set-shifting in a virtual environment. 73 participants completed affective questionnaires (Beck Depression Inventory-II, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Positive and Negative Affective Scale), a 5-minute baseline electrocardiogram, and the VMWT. Individuals who failed to complete the task exhibited significantly lower baseline RMSSD then those who completed the task. There was no direct effect between affective measures and task performance. Higher baseline HRV was predictive of better performance during set-shifting. Trait NA moderated the effect of baseline HRV, as well as trait positive affectivity (PA), on performance during the extradimensional shift condition. Increased behavioral flexibility performance was only predicted by higher HRV and PA in low NA individuals. High trait NA negates the positive effects of HRV and PA on behavioral flexibility.