Older people's cardiac responses as indicators of stress in familiar and unfamiliar environments
Little is known about older people's physiological and emotional responses to environmental triggers. We examined this by estimating cardiac stress from heart rate variability (HRV). Thirty‐eight participants were monitored while observing environmental scenarios at familiar and unfamiliar loca...
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Published in | Psychophysiology Vol. 49; no. 4; pp. 478 - 483 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01.04.2012
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Little is known about older people's physiological and emotional responses to environmental triggers. We examined this by estimating cardiac stress from heart rate variability (HRV). Thirty‐eight participants were monitored while observing environmental scenarios at familiar and unfamiliar locations. Image scenarios included pedestrian and driving scenes in a random order. HRV indices including heart rate (HR), QT variability index (QTVI) and Total HRV Power (TP) were quantified. Familiar locations were associated with higher HR (p < .0005) and lower TP (p = .005) than unfamiliar locations, suggesting they were more stressful. HRV responses to pedestrian and driving scenarios indicated that stress was not influenced by either the type of image scenario or the order of image presentation. There were no gender‐related differences in cardiac responses. HRV is a useful surrogate of cardiac stress when assessing older people's responses to their environments. |
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Bibliography: | ark:/67375/WNG-6ZD80NPH-F UK Research Councils - No. RES-352-25-0003 istex:C6E374C30EBC515EBD0C48CC28020916631ABA19 ArticleID:PSYP1321 ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
ISSN: | 0048-5772 1540-5958 1469-8986 |
DOI: | 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2011.01321.x |