Key result
Varying perceptual/central processing demands affected sympathetic cardiovascular control, whereas physical demands affected parasympathetic cardiovascular control during a manual tracking task.
Why the study?
How do perceptual/central and physical demands affect psychophysiological measures of peripheral nervous system activity during continuous manual performance?
How do perceptual/central and physical demands affect psychophysiological measures of peripheral nervous system activity during continuous manual performance?
Dissociations observed among cardiovascular measures in manual performance tasks are attributable to differential activation of the autonomic control systems by perceptual/central versus physical demands.
Distinguishes sympathetic from parasympathetic responses by demand type; leaves open generalization to clinical cardiovascular monitoring.
Twelve subjects (six female) participated in an experiment designed to separate the effects of perceptual/central and physical demands on psychophysiological measures of peripheral nervous system activity. The difficulty of a single-axis continuous manual tracking task was varied in two ways: order of control was manipulated to vary perceptual/central processing demand, and disturbance amplitude was manipulated to vary physical demand. Physiological measures were sensitive to the imposition of a task and were more sensitive to physical than to perceptual/central demands. A principal components analysis identified five factors (three of them physiological) that accounted for 83.1% of the observed variance. Perceptual/central processing demands specifically affected the component identified with sympathetic cardiovascular control, whereas physical demands were reflected in the component identified with parasympathetic cardiovascular control. This finding suggests that dissociations observed among cardiovascular measures in manual performance tasks are attributable to differential activation of the autonomic control systems.
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Backs et al. (1994) studied this question. Variation of perceptual/central and physical demands in a manual tracking task was evaluated on Psychophysiological measures of peripheral nervous system activity. Varying perceptual/central processing demands affected sympathetic cardiovascular control, whereas physical demands affected parasympathetic cardiovascular control during a manual tracking task.
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