Self-focus and task difficulty effects on effort-related cardiovascular reactivity

Dissociations between data-driven and goal-driven effort reports: Performance, metacognition, and affect

Measuring effort has long been a challenge and this seems particularly true in the case of subjective effort. Koriat et al. compared two types of effort frames, what they call data-driven effort, the amount of effort perceived to be required by a task, and goal-driven effort, the amount of effort one chooses to invest in a task. This study investigates whether self-reports of data- and goal-driven effort are differentially associated with test performance, metacognition, and affect in a complex learning task. Results demonstrate that data- and goal-driven effort have qualitatively different relations with many of these variables. For example, partial correlations revealed data-driven effort was negatively associated with prospective and retrospective performance estimates, but the opposite pattern emerged for goal-driven effort. These results demonstrate that how subjective measures of effort are framed (and interpreted by the respondent) can drastically influence how they relate to other variables of interest.

Personal task choice attenuates implicit happiness effects on effort: A study on cardiovascular response

Research on the Implicit-Affect-Primes-Effort model (Gendolla, 2012) found that priming happiness or anger in challenging tasks results in stronger sympathetically mediated cardiovascular responses, reflecting effort, than priming sadness or fear. Recent studies on action shielding revealed that personal task choice can attenuate affective influences on action execution (e.g., Gendolla et al., 2021). The present experiment tested if this action shielding effect also applies to affect primes' influences on cardiovascular response. Participants (N = 136) worked on a cognitive task with integrated briefly flashed and backward masked facial expressions of sadness vs. happiness. Half of the participants could ostensibly choose whether they wanted to work on an attention or on a memory task, while the other half was assigned to one task. Our findings revealed effects on cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP), which align with the expected outcomes for a task of unfixed difficulty where participants establish their own performance standard. Most importantly, task choice shielded against the implicit affective influence on PEP that was evident when the task was externally assigned. Effects on systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity largely corresponded to those of PEP.

A positive side effect of wearing face coverings for socially anxious females: Findings from a speech task

Background

Wearing face masks has become more common due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Until now, it has not been investigated whether socially anxious individuals can reduce their acute anxiety symptoms by wearing face masks during a speech task.

Method

Fifty-nine socially anxious females were asked to prepare and give an oral presentation. Participants were randomly allocated either to a group that was asked to wear a face mask during the task, or to a group that was not asked to wear a face mask during the task. Dependent variables included physiological parameters (systolic/diastolic blood pressure, heart rate) and self-reports (valence and arousal at baseline, as well as directly before and after the presentation).

Results

The analyses showed that the group without face masks had a higher systolic blood pressure than the group with face masks, directly before as well as after the presentation. The two groups did not differ in the other measures.

Conclusion

Wearing face masks has a small stress-reducing effect on socially anxious females.

Commentary: Engage or disengage? Interpretations from a resource conservation perspective

In this commentary, I discuss the eight empirical contributions to the Motivation and Emotion special issue on goal disengagement from a resource conservation perspective. This process was not in the focus of the reported studies, but is central for understanding both engaging and disengaging. I will outline that many of the new findings on disengagement reported in this special issue are highly compatible with the predictions of and research on motivational intensity theory. Examples are the roles of commitment, subjective goal value, affective experiences, autonomy, self-awareness, and action planning. These variables have been found to be central for both engagement and disengagement and their consideration in a resource mobilization perspective should contribute to a more complete understanding of “letting go”.

Self-awareness protects working memory in people under chronic stress: An ERP study

Chronic stress impairs working memory (WM), but few studies have explored the protective factors of the impairment. We aimed to investigate the effect of self-awareness on WM processing in people under chronic stress. Participants under chronic stress completed an n-back task after a self-awareness priming paradigm during which electroencephalograms were recorded. The behavioral results showed that participants whose self-awareness was primed reacted faster and more accurately than the controls. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed the following (1) P2 was more positive in the self-awareness group than in the controls, indicating that self-awareness enhanced allocation of attention resources at the encoding stage. (2) N2 was attenuated in the self-awareness group compared with the controls, indicating that smaller attention control efforts were required to complete WM tasks adequately after self-awareness priming; and (3) enhanced late positive potential (LPP) was evoked in the self-awareness group compared with the controls, suggesting self-awareness enabled participants to focus attention resources on the information at the maintenance stage. Critically, mediational analyses showed that LPP mediated the relationship between self-awareness and WM response times. This result suggests that the fact that participants whose self-awareness was primed were able to achieve better behavioral performances may be attributed to their mobilization of sustained attention resources at the maintenance stage. In summary, self-awareness exerted a protective effect on WM in those under chronic stress, which may be due to the enhancements in the allocation and mobilization of attention. These results could be used to develop more specific coping strategies for people under chronic stress.

The Intensity Side of Volition

Abstract. Attaining sports or health goals requires not only high motivation but also the willpower to translate sport-behavior intentions into successful action. This volitional regulation calls for the mobilization of effort to overcome obstacles in the pursuit of goals. The present article provides a theoretical and empirical overview of motivation intensity theory ( Brehm & Self, 1989 ) – a conceptual framework that makes clear and testable predictions about effort mobilization in various contexts. First, we present the guiding principles of this theory and its operationalizations by measures of effort-related cardiovascular reactivity and physical handgrip force. Second, we review a selection of empirical tests of the basic assumptions of this theory and the impact of psychological moderator variables such as affect, fatigue, pain, and personality on effort mobilization. Finally, we discuss important implications of these findings for the sports and health domains and make suggestions for future research.

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.

Aging, effort, and stereotyping: The evidence for the moderating role of self-involvement

A study with young and older adults (N = 91) investigated the effect of self-involvement on stereotyping tendency and effort mobilization. We hypothesized that the impact of self-involvement varies as a function of age: increased self-involvement should lead older adults to engage in more effortful information processing and decreased stereotyping, whereas increased self-involvement should have no impact on effort mobilization and stereotyping tendency in young adults. Young and older adults read narratives under low and high-self-involvement conditions before performing a recognition test that measured their stereotyping tendency. Effort was assessed as cardiovascular responses. We found that older adults in the high-self-involvement condition presented low stereotyping tendency (similar to that of young people) in comparison to older adults in the low-self-involvement condition. Furthermore, older adults in the high-self-involvement condition had decreased high-frequency heart rate variability in comparison to the other conditions, but only during the recognition test; this suggests increased effort mobilization. These findings indicate that self-involvement decreases older adults' stereotyping tendency, possibly through effort mobilization.

Emotion socialization as a predictor of physiological and psychological responses to stress

Reactivity patterns to acute stress are important indicators of physical and mental health. However, the relationships between emotion socialization and stress responses are not well understood. This study aimed to examine whether parental responses to negative emotions predicted physiological and psychological responses to acute stress in late adolescence and emerging adulthood, and whether these relationships varied by gender and ethnicity. Participants were 973 individuals (mean age=19.20years; 50% male; 63% African American, 34% European American) who reported on parental emotion socialization. Participants completed a standardized social stress test (the Trier Social Stress Test; TSST). Heart rate, blood pressure and salivary samples were assessed from baseline throughout the task and during recovery period. Psychological responses to stress were measured immediately after the TSST. Unsupportive parental responses to children's negative emotions were associated with blunted cortisol reactivity and greater negative emotions to a psychosocial stress task in females and African American youth, whereas supportive parental responses predicted greater cortisol reactivity and lower negative emotions to stress in European American youth, as well as less negative emotions in males. However, parental responses to negative emotions did not predict heart rate or SBP reactivity to the TSST. Findings suggest that parental emotion socialization may be an important factor influencing HPA axis reactivity and psychological responses to stress, with important differences across gender and ethnic youth subgroups.

Perfectionism and Effort-Related Cardiac Activity: Do Perfectionists Try Harder?

Do perfectionists try harder? Previous research on perfectionism and effort has used self-report items and task performance as indicators of effort. The current study investigated whether individual differences in perfectionism predicted effort-related cardiac activity during a mental effort task. Based on past research that suggests adaptive perfectionism is associated with higher effort, it was hypothesized that self-oriented perfectionism (SOP) would predict increased effort on the task. One hundred and eleven college students completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) and a self-paced parity task in which they received a small cash reward (3 cents) for each correct response. Impedance cardiography was used to assess autonomic reactivity, and regression models tested whether SOP and socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP) explained autonomic reactivity. Overall, participants showed both sympathetic (faster pre-ejection period; PEP) and parasympathetic activation (elevated high-frequency heart rate variability; HRV) during the task, reflecting higher effort and engagement. Contrary to predictions, individual differences in perfectionism did not moderate cardiac reactivity. These findings draw attention to the importance of assessing physiological components of effort and motivation directly rather than inferring them from task performance or self-reported effort.

Endocrine and mood responses to two working days in female teachers

Currently, a considerable amount of work stress is present in school teachers, one of the occupational groups with the highest levels of job strain and burnout. As chronic stress produces significant modifications in emotional adjustment and neuroendocrine functioning, we aimed to investigate the role of these work stress constructs in the endocrine and mood responses of a group of female teachers during two working days (WD) at different moments in the academic year. We studied mood as well as levels of cortisol and testosterone, representative of a predominant catabolic or anabolic balance. Our results showed that higher "control" was associated with higher positive mood (p = .028 on WD1 and p = .057 on WD2) and salivary testosterone (Tsal) (p = .022 on WD1), whereas "demands" and "total job strain" were related to negative mood (p = .011 and p = .015, respectively). Participants with higher scores on "total burnout" and "emotional exhaustion" also had higher negative mood (p < .05 in all cases). Depersonalization correlated positively with negative mood (p = .019 and p = .006 on WD1 and WD2, respectively). Finally, personal accomplishment showed an inverse relationship with negative mood (p = .038 on WD2). These results are useful for job risk prevention and interventions that should focus on the control dimension of the job strain questionnaire and on personal accomplishment from the burnout scale.

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 effect of communication skills training on residents' physiological arousal in a breaking bad news simulated task

OBJECTIVE

Breaking bad news (BBN) is a complex task which involves dealing cognitively with different relevant dimensions and a challenging task which involves dealing with intense emotional contents. No study however has yet assessed in a randomized controlled trial design the effect of a communication skills training on residents' physiological arousal during a BBN task.

METHODS

Residents' physiological arousal was measured, in a randomized controlled trial design, by heart rate and salivary cortisol before, during and after a BBN simulated task.

RESULTS

Ninety-eight residents were included. MANOVA showed significant group-by-time effects. Trained residents' mean heart rate levels remained elevated after training and cortisol areas under the curve increased after training compared to untrained residents.

CONCLUSION

Communication skills training has an effect on residents' physiological arousal. Residents' self-efficacy and communication skills improvements in a BBN simulated task are associated with an elevated physiological arousal, which becomes proportional to the complexity of the task and reflects a better engagement and performance.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Residents should be informed that, to perform a task, they need to engage in the task with a physiological arousal proportional to the complexity of this task. Communication skills training should be adapted.

Gritty people try harder: grit and effort-related cardiac autonomic activity during an active coping challenge

Grit, a recently proposed personality trait associated with persistence for long-range goals, predicts achievement in a wide range of important life outcomes. Using motivational intensity theory, the present research examined the physiological underpinnings of grit during an active coping task. Forty young adults completed the Short Grit Scale and worked on a self-paced mental effort task. Effort-related autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity was assessed using impedance cardiography, which yielded measures of sympathetic activity (pre-ejection period; PEP) and parasympathetic activity (respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA). Multilevel models revealed that people high on the Perseverance of Effort subscale showed autonomic coactivation: both PEP and RSA became stronger during the task, reflecting higher activity of both ANS divisions. The Consistency of Interest subscale, in contrast, predicted only weaker sympathetic activity (slower PEP). Taken together, the findings illuminate autonomic processes associated with how "gritty" people pursue goals, and they suggest that more attention should be paid to the facets' distinct effects.

Trait self-focused attention increases sensitivity to nonconscious primes: evidence from effort-related cardiovascular reactivity

A broad range of primes presented outside of awareness - ranging from emotional faces to people's first names - can influence the physiological mobilization of effort during active coping tasks. Who responds more strongly to implicit cues? Based on models of self-awareness, the present research examined how individual differences in self-focused attention influence sensitivity to nonconscious primes. Adults completed a challenging cognitive task in which two kinds of primes were presented (people's first names and words related to the task's difficulty). Trait self-focus significantly interacted with both primes to predict effort, measured as systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity. People high in trait self-focus had significantly higher SBP reactivity when primed with words that made the task seem more important (their first names) and harder (high difficulty words). These findings thus expand the evidence for motivational intensity theory's analysis of implicit processes.

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.

Self-Awareness Without Awareness? Implicit Self-Focused Attention and Behavioral Self-Regulation

Objective self-awareness theory contends that focusing attention on the self initiates an automatic comparison of self to standards. To gain evidence for automatic self-standard comparison processes, two experiments manipulated attention to self with subliminal first-name priming. People completed a computer-based parity task after being instructed that the standard was to be fast or to be accurate. Subliminal first name priming increased behavioral adherence to the explicit standard. When told to be fast, self-focused people made more mistakes and had faster response times; when told to be accurate, self-focused people made fewer mistakes. A manipulation of conscious self-awareness (via a mirror) had the same self-regulatory effects. The findings suggest that comparing self to standards can occur automatically and that it is attention to self, not awareness of the self per se, that evokes self-evaluation.

Mirrors, masks, and motivation: implicit and explicit self-focused attention influence effort-related cardiovascular reactivity

Using motivational intensity theory as a framework, three experiments examined how implicit self-focus (manipulated with masked first-name priming) and explicit self-focus (manipulated with a large mirror) influence effort-related cardiovascular activity, particularly systolic blood pressure reactivity. Theories of self-focused attention suggest that both implicit and explicit self-focus bring about self-evaluation and thus make meeting a goal more important. For a "do your best" task of unfixed difficulty, implicit and explicit self-focus both increased effort (Experiment 1) compared to a control condition. For a task that varied in difficulty, implicit and explicit self-focus promoted more effort as the task became increasingly hard (Experiments 2 and 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that implicit and explicit self-processes share a similar motivational architecture. The discussion explores the value of integrating motivational intensity theory with self-awareness theory and considers the emerging interest in implicit aspects of effort regulation.

The Mediating Role of Monitoring in the Association of Religion With Self-Control

Religiosity is related to a variety of positive outcomes and the nature of this relationship has long been a topic of inquiry. Recently, it was proposed that an important piece of this puzzle may be the propensity for religious beliefs to promote self-control, a trait that is linked to a range of benefits. How religion translates into self-control, however, remains unclear. We examined the extent to which religiosity’s relationship with self-control is mediated by self-monitoring, perceived monitoring by God, and perceived monitoring by other people. Results revealed that more religious people tended to monitor their standing regarding their goals (self-monitoring) to a greater degree, which in turn related to more self-control. Also, religious people tended to believe that a higher power was watching them, which related to greater self-monitoring, which in turn was related to more self-control.

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.

How much is residents' distress detection performance during a clinical round related to their characteristics?

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to investigate residents' characteristics associated with their performance in detecting patients' distress (detection performance).

METHODS

Residents' detection performance was assessed in a clinical round. A mean detection performance score was calculated for each resident by comparing residents' rating of patients' distress (VAS) with patients' reported distress (HADS). Residents' characteristics include general (socio-demographic, professional and psychological), detection (self-efficacy, attitudes and outcome expectancies) and performance characteristics (communication skills (LaComm), psychological arousal (STAI) and physiological arousal (heart rate and blood pressure) in a highly emotional and complex simulated interview task).

RESULTS

Ninety-four residents and 442 inpatients were included. 30% of the variance in residents' detection performance was related to residents' performance characteristics: anxiety level (p=.040) and mean arterial blood pressure (p=.019) before the task; empathy (p=.027) and mean heart rate (p=.043) during the task; mean arterial blood pressure changes (p=.012) during the assessment procedure.

CONCLUSION

Residents' detection performance is partly related to their performance characteristics. Psychological and physiological arousals are key characteristics--beside empathic skills--that need to be considered in models designed to determine detection performance.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Future interventions designed to improve residents' detection performance should focus notably on their performance characteristics.

Endocrinological and psychological responses to job stressors: an experimental test of the job demand--control model

The buffer hypothesis of the Job Demand-Control Model predicts that high levels of job control compensate for the negative effects of high job demands on well-being and health. Several studies have tested this hypothesis, but the results are far from consistent. The objective of this study was to test the buffer hypothesis with respect to psychological (subjective well-being) and physiological (salivary cortisol) indicators of job strain, using an experimental study design. Seventy-seven men and women worked at a simulated computer workplace for more than two hours. Job demands and job control were manipulated in a 2 (job demands: high vs. low)×2 (job control: high vs. low)×7 (time of measurement) study design. Demands were operationalized in terms of workload, and pacing control (self-paced vs. machine-paced) was used as a job control manipulation. As dependent variables, subjective well-being and salivary cortisol were measured at seven time points during the experiment (T1-T7). In line with the buffer hypothesis, high control eliminated the impact of high demands on salivary cortisol responses. The hypothesis was supported by a predicted significant three-way interaction of demands, control and time of measurement (p<.001), qualified by the absence of significant effects of the independent variables at T1 and T2 due to lagged cortisol reactions, and significant two-way interactions of demands and control, as predicted by the model, at the five remaining times of measurement (T3-T7): high demands led to increased cortisol reactions only in the low control condition. In contrast, no main or interaction effects of the independent variables were found for subjective well-being. This discrepancy between physiological and psychological stress reactions might be due to the lack of specificity inherent in measures of subjective well-being, due to lagged psychological reactions, or due to self-report biases in the subjective measures. In sum, this study provides the first clear-cut experimental evidence for the idea that the negative impact of high job demands on endocrinological responses can be buffered by high levels of job control.

Long-lasting effect of subliminal processes on cardiovascular responses and performance

Students were exposed to a priming task in which subliminal representations of the goal of studying were directly paired (priming-positive group) or not (priming group) to positive words. A control group without subliminal prime of the goal was added. Just after the priming task, students performed an easy or a difficult learning task based on their coursework. Participants in the priming-positive group performed better and had a stronger decrease of pulse transit time and pulse wave amplitude reactivity than participants of the two other groups, but only during the difficult condition. Results suggested that subliminal priming induces effortful behavior extending over twenty five minutes but only when the primes had been associated with visible positive words acting as a reward. These findings provide evidence that subliminal priming can have long-lasting effects on behaviors typical of daily life.

Masked first name priming increases effort-related cardiovascular reactivity

Recent research on motivational intensity has shown that explicit manipulations of self-focused attention (e.g., mirrors and video cameras) increase effort-related cardiovascular responses during active coping. An experiment examined whether masked first name priming, an implicit manipulation of self-focused attention, had similar effects. Participants (n=52 young adults) performed a self-paced cognitive task, in which they were told to get as many trials correct as possible within 5min. During the task, the participant's first name was primed for 0%, 33%, 67%, or 100% of the trials. First name priming, regardless of its frequency, significantly increased cardiovascular reactivity, particularly systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity. Furthermore, the priming manipulation interacted with individual differences in trait self-focus: trait self-focus predicted higher SBP reactivity in the 0% condition, but first name priming eliminated the effects of individual differences. Implications for self-awareness research and for the emerging interest in priming effects on effort are considered.

Effects of competition on endurance performance and the underlying psychological and physiological mechanisms

Competition can influence performance, however, the underlying psychological and physiological mechanisms are poorly understood. To address this issue we tested mechanisms underlying the competition-performance relationship. Measures of anxiety, effort, enjoyment, autonomic activity and muscle activity were obtained from 94 participants during a handgrip endurance task completed in individual and competition conditions. Competition improved endurance performance, increased anxiety, effort, enjoyment, heart rate and muscle activity, and decreased heart rate variability, R-wave to pulse interval and pulse amplitude. Enjoyment fully mediated whereas effort and heart rate variability partially mediated the effects of competition on performance. In addition, anxiety moderated the competition-performance relationship; those with lower anxiety performed better in competition. We confirm that competition elicits effects on performance through psychological and physiological pathways, and identify mechanisms that underlie improved endurance performance during competition.

Trait self-focused attention, task difficulty, and effort-related cardiovascular reactivity

Using motivational intensity theory as a framework, the present experiment examined how individual differences in self-focused attention interact with task difficulty to predict effort, assessed via cardiovascular reactivity. Participants (n = 50) worked on a cognitive task fixed at an easy, medium, or hard level of difficulty, and individual differences in private self-consciousness and self-reflection were measured. Regression models indicated that trait self-focus interacted with task difficulty to predict cardiovascular reactivity, particularly systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity. Participants low and high in trait self-focus showed similar SBP reactivity in the easy and medium conditions, but they diverged in the hard condition: High trait focus was associated with higher SBP reactivity, indicating greater effort, whereas low trait self-focus was associated with low SBP reactivity, indicating disengagement. The findings thus support the motivational intensity approach to effort and its interpretation of self-focus's role in effort mobilization.

Physiological responses to workload change. A test/retest examination

The purpose of this study is to examine the test/retest consistency of physiological responses induced by mental tasks. Fifteen healthy male university students were recruited as participants. They were instructed to perform a 5-min Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB) trial three times successively. The task difficulty level of the tracking task of the second trial was set as medium (M). The first one was set as more difficult (H) and the last trial was easiest (L). The difficulty levels of the other two tasks (resource management and system monitoring) of the MATB were identical for all three trials. The participants repeated this procedure on three different days separated by at least a 1-day interval. The order of the tasks was the same for all repeated trials, i.e., H-M-L. Tissue blood volume from the tip of the nose using a laser Doppler blood flow meter, skin potential level (SPL), ECG from three leads on the chest, systolic time intervals (pre-ejection period, left ventricular ejection time), and hemodynamic parameters (stroke volume, cardiac output) were recorded during the task trials and before and after 5-min resting periods. The participants reported their subjective workload via NASA-TLX after each task trial. Autonomic nervous system parameters derived from the above-mentioned signals, subjective workload scores, and performance indices of MATB were analyzed, and test/retest reliability was investigated. The results showed that a significant test/retest correlation was obtained for SPL for more participants than in the other parameters, although there were large individual differences.