Award for distinguished contributions to psychophysiology: J. Richard Jennings

J. Richard Jennings received the Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology Award of the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) in 2014 in recognition of a career characterized by lasting achievements in several domains of importance in psychophysiology. Among these are his studies on the cardiac concomitants of cognitive processes, the relation between hypertension and the brain, methodological issues, and his contributions to the discipline. After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Idaho, J. Richard—known to most of us as Dick—Jennings received his Ph.D. in 1969 at the University of California, Berkeley, where Richard S. Lazarus was his supervisor. His dissertation work was highly innovative and methodologically sound. It was innovative, in that he applied a cardiac measure, which John and Bea Lacey had made available to psychophysiologists with a cognitive interest, to a central issue in developmental psychology. Piagetian developmental theory assumes that the child proceeds through a series of progressively more powerful cognitive structures—a highly debated proposition. Dick selected children at different cognitive levels (preoperational, transitional, and operational) using standard Piagetian assessment and required them to perform on experimental analogues of level-appropriate Piagetian tasks while their heart rate was recorded. The results revealed that heart rate differentiated between cognitive levels, with heart rate slowing in preoperational children, consistent with their perceptual approach to cognitive problems, and heart rate acceleration in operational children, suggestive of their autonomous mental strategy (Jennings, 1971). The dissertation work gained methodological rigor from an immediately prior study designed to address opposing positions of the Laceys and Paul Obrist on the interpretation of cardiac deceleration. Lacey's intake-rejection hypothesis proposed that heart rate slows when attention is diverted to the environment thereby facilitating sensorimotor processes (e.g., Lacey, 1967) while Obrist and colleagues emphasized the fundamental linkage between the direction and magnitude of heart rate and variations in somatic response (e.g., Oberist, Webb, Sutterer, & Howard, 1970). In Dick's dissertation work, the antecedent conditions of the heart rate response were examined using judicious task manipulation in a factorial design. The results yielded the same basic heart rate response for all conditions included in the study—an initial acceleration followed by a pronounced deceleration that is typically observed in signaled stimulus tasks. Importantly, the specific pattern differed between conditions. Dick concluded: “In short, it seems the hypotheses of both Obrist and Lacey may contain part of the truth. However, it is difficult to say which part, since neither hypothesis is sufficiently specific on the psychological (in contrast to physiological) level—that is, with regard to the influence of situational parameters” (Jennings, Averill, Opton, & Lazarus, 1971; p. 211). During his career, Dick continued to pursue this specification issue. Dick left Berkeley to take a position as a research psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute, Washington. Here, he collaborated with Charles Wood with whom he published two seminal papers. One study was on the speed-accuracy tradeoff in choice reaction tasks—a central issue in the study of speeded performance. This paper reviewed and compared existing procedures for examining speed-accuracy tradeoff and provided a strategy for determining tradeoff that was less stringent than existing procedures and yet less sensitive to experimental and statistical error (Wood & Jennings, 1976). The other study used a speed-accuracy tradeoff design to assess the critical factors controlling the shift from anticipatory heart rate deceleration to acceleratory recovery in a two-choice reaction task. The results revealed that the shift from anticipatory deceleration to acceleratory recovery was associated with the timing of task completion vis-à-vis the R-wave of the electrocardiogram (Jennings & Wood, 1977). These two studies laid the foundation for an important common thread running through the remainder of Dick's academic career—the combined interest in mental chronometry and the timing of the heartbeat. In 1978, Dick was hired by the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC), University of Pittsburgh, as an assistant professor where he has remained until the present day. At WPIC, Dick developed two major research lines—one devoted to cognitive psychophysiology and the other to psychosomatic medicine. The former thread has been aptly reviewed in his presidential address to the Society (Jennings, 1992), and more recently in a Psychological Bulletin article (Jennings & van der Molen, 2005). In his address, he asked whether it is important that the mind is in a body. He answered this question in the affirmative. This research demonstrated that the transient slowing of heart rate around the imperative stimulus in speeded performance tasks is associated with the blocking of direct links between perception and action. This blocking occurs when routine action is likely to result in inappropriate responses. The central idea that is advanced in the presidential address is that the transient heart rate response associated with central blocking is firmly based on phase-dependent oscillatory regulation integrated with central nervous system inhibitory circuits. This idea suggests that, indeed, central processing is constrained by bodily regulation. The other important thread in Dick's research is concerned with the hypertensive brain. This work has been reviewed in his presidential address to the American Psychosomatic Society and in an address upon receiving their Distinguished Scientist Award. Here, Dick asked the question whether the brain is a key player among the influences leading to hypertension—one of the most common diseases in the Western world. The studies designed to answer this question yielded several important findings. It was demonstrated that hypertension is associated with a decrease in gray matter volume of specific areas in the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Gianaros, Greer, Ryan, & Jennings, 2006). In addition, it was observed that initial working memory and frontostriatal blood flow predict the progression of systolic blood pressure across time. Another important finding showed that brain aging, indexed by brain ventricle size, predicted the success of blood pressure treatment. Unfortunately, it appeared that, in spite of successful blood pressure treatment, gray matter loss persists and cognitive function is not restored. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that the brain is important in hypertension (Jennings & Zanstra, 2009), and Dick's work detailed important relations between the brain, cognition, and the control of blood pressure. In this regard, he is a worthy successor at Pitt to a professor of medicine, Alvin P. Shapiro, who pioneered work on psychosomatic factors in hypertension. During his academic career, Dick was intrigued by methodological issues. An early demonstration of his methodological interests refers to the introduction of a new photoplethysmograph for the noninvasive assessment of peripheral circulation. Existing devices were argued to be prone to error due to the influence of prior light exposure on the output of the photoconductive cell contained by these devices. Together with his colleagues at Walter Reed, Dick designed an improved device free of such error (Lee, Tamoush, & Jennings, 1975). Plethysmographic measurement of peripheral vascular measures continued to attract Dick's interest. He contributed several papers evaluating optical devices (e.g., Jennings & Choi, 1983; Jennings, Young, & Brock, 1991; Sunderman & Jennings, 1983) and chapters on the noninvasive measurement of peripheral vascular activity (Jennings, Westervelt, & Ackles, 1987; Tahmoush, Jennings, Lee, Camp, & Weber, 1976). Dick spent considerable effort in the appropriate analysis of cardiovascular measures and the assessment of cardiovascular reactivity. In an early paper, he compared the statistical distribution of heart rate versus heart period that resulted in the recommendation to use heart period rather than heart rate, as the former is distributed more normally than the latter. His interest in the statistical analysis of physiological measures is reflected also in his frequently cited paper in Psychophysiology on the epsilon-adjustment procedure for repeated measurement analysis of variance (Jennings & Wood, 1976) and his editorial policy for Psychophysiology on this important issue (Jennings, 1987). Going beyond statistical analysis, Dick contributed several communications on the appropriate recording and analysis of heart rate and other cardiovascular measures, including his guidelines report for Psychophysiology (Jennings et al., 1981). He presented recommendations for the analysis of cardiac cycle time (Jennings, van der Molen, Somsen, & Ridderinkhof, 1991) and commented on the use of alternative methods proposed by others (Jennings, 1999). He wrote widely on the assessment of cardiovascular reactivity (Debski et al., 1991; Jennings, Kamarck, Stewart, Eddy, & Johnson, 1992; Kamarck et al., 1992; Kamarck, Jennings, Porgue-Geile, & Manuck, 1994). Beyond the cardiovascular system, Dick has been concerned with the assessment of thermoregulation during sleep (Jennings, Dahl, Ansseau, & Westervelt, 1985), thermal pain threshold (Perkins, Grobe, Jennings, Epstein, & Elash, 1992), and the thermal vascular assessment of Raynaud's disease (Jennings, Maricq et al., 1999). Other issues he addressed refer to the scoring of penile erectness (Campbell et al., 1987), alternatives to cigarette smoking in the study of the physiological effects of nicotine (Perkins et al., 1986), and methods to be used in comparing cerebral blood flow patterns between groups (Gamalo, Ombao, & Jennings, 2005). Finally, he contributed textbook chapters on the methodology of psychophysiology at large (Jennings & Allen, 2016; Jennings & Gianaros, 2007; Jennings & Stine, 2000). This long list of methodological contributions provides an indication of the range and depth of Dick's scholarship in this domain. Throughout his academic career, Dick has been very generous in spreading his knowledge and helping others in their research. Academic societies provided Dick with the communication channels for sharing his knowledge and skills with others. He went through the rank and files of the Society of Psychophysiology and the American Psychosomatic Society and served as associate editor of the journals associated with these societies (Psychophysiology and Psychosomatic Medicine). For 11 years, he was the editor of Biological Psychology, another important journal in our field. On the cover of this journal, he is currently listed as “honorary editor” for his previous and continuing editorial and managerial efforts. Dick's editorial work includes the coediting of important handbooks on behavioral medicine (Manuck, Jennings, Rabin, & Baum, 2000; Steptoe, 2010). Together with Michael Coles, he edited the Handbook of the Psychophysiology of Information Processing (Jennings & Coles, 1991). This is a highly interesting handbook, as it goes beyond single-measure psychophysiology. Authors from central and autonomic domains were invited to blend their perspectives on fundamental issues in the psychophysiological study of information processing resulting in a comprehensive perspective on cognitive psychophysiology. Obviously, Dick's outreach attracted highly motivated students. Dick's teaching proved to be extremely successful. Two of his students were recipients of the SPR distinguished early career contribution awards—Thomas W. Kamarck (1991) and Eveline Crone (2011). The former received the award for his work on cardiovascular reactivity and the latter for her studies on developmental cognitive psychophysiology. In this regard, the work of the two recipients nicely reflects the two major threads in Dick's psychophysiological interests. Another student—Peter J. Gianaros—received the American Psychological Association Award For Distinguished Early Career Scientific Contributions to Psychology in Health Psychology (2010). Before the Society of Psychophysiology crossed the Atlantic Ocean (SPR meeting, Amsterdam, 1987), Dick contributed already to psychophysiology in Europe. He presented an invited address on cardiac responsivity during information processing to the Department of Psychology at the Free University, Amsterdam (1982). Shortly thereafter he attended the Cardiovascular Psychophysiology conference in the Netherlands (Noordwijkerhout, NL, 1983) where he contributed a paper on the timing of phasic heart rate responses at the nexus of psychology and cardiology (Jennings, 1985). Not before long, Amsterdam became Dick's second home. He spent considerable effort in learning Dutch during his stays at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS fellow, 1998, 2011). The Dutch connection resulted in a series of collaborative papers on the factors controlling the timing of heart rate changes in speeded performance tasks—both experimental (for a review, Jennings & van der Molen, 2005) and biological (Somsen, Molenaar, van der Molen, & Jennings, 1991). Up north, he collaborated extensively with Finnish researchers on cardiovascular disease (e.g., Jennings et al., 2004). At this point, a personal note is appropriate to highlight Dick's generosity and guidance in his collaboration abroad. When I was working on my doctoral thesis at the Department of Psychology of the Free University, Amsterdam, we obtained data that did not seem to square with the interpretation of the critical factors implicated in the timing of phasic heart rate changes proposed by Jennings and Wood (1977). My supervisor, Prof. Ko Orlebeke, convinced me that I should contact Dr. Jennings and solicit his opinion on the apparent divergence in our findings and associated interpretations. I wrote Dr. Jennings a snail mail to this effect and, much to my surprise, I received a very friendly reply. I was surprised, as I did not expect that a leading expert in this field would take the trouble to respond to a novice in the Low Countries. Dick's response was very down to earth—he proposed to run a decisive experiment to solve this issue. We wrote a grant to this effect for a series of studies that was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This grant solved our issues and resulted in a series of papers (primarily in Psychophysiology; e.g., Jennings, van der Molen, Brock, & Somsen, 1991). These publications served as the springboard for a grant submitted to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). This grant allowed us to study thoroughly the antecedent conditions of phasic heart rate changes and to apply this measure to augment performance measures of response activation, inhibition, and feedback processing. For this work, NIMH presented Dick with a Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) award. The rest is history. In conclusion, the Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology Award is rightfully presented to Dick Jennings. His work is firmly based in the foundations of cardiovascular psychophysiology. Together with Michael Coles (the 2002 recipient of the Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology Award), he wrote an obituary for John I. Lacey (the 1970 recipient of the Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology Award). Here, Dick and Mike indicated that, at the time of the pioneering research of John I. Lacey, the field of psychophysiology was defined by the alliance of psychology, physiology, medicine, and engineering. In their opinion, John Lacey fit the field well with his interests in all members of the alliance (Jennings & Coles, 2006; p. 230). The current citation echoes that psychophysiology is a multifaceted discipline and that Dick Jennings fits the current field very well with his interests in cognitive psychology, cardiovascular psychophysiology, somatic medicine, and methodology.