Psychological Stress Test
The acute psychological stress test we used was a ten-minute version of the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) (Gronwall, 1977). This has been shown to reliably perturb both the cardiovascular system and salivary cortisol levels (Phillips et al., 2005, Phillips et al., 2006, Phillips et al., 2009) and demonstrate good test-retest reliability (Willemsen et al., 1998). In this task, the participants were presented, via a compact disc player, a series of single digit numbers and were required to add the present number to the number previously presented and report their answer aloud. They then have to remember the last number that they heard and add it to the next number presented. For example, if they first two numbers presented were six and four they have to add them together and call out the answer “ten”. They then have to remember the …show more content…
These cardiovascular measures were taken during minutes 2, 4, 6 and 8 of the baseline, stress task and recovery periods. A single measure was also taken during minute four of the adaptation period for familiarity and to ensure the equipment was functional, however, this data was not recorded. Heart rate was also measured continuously from the QRS complex using electrocardiography (ECG) and spot electrodes placed on the right and left clavicle and lower left rib. Blood pressure (BP) was also continuously measured, this time from the left index finger using a Portapres Model-2? (Finapres Medical Systems, Amsterdam, the Netherlands). The data was continuously sampled at 200 Hz? using an analogue-digital converter (PowerLab, ADInstruments, Sydney, Australia) and analyzed using LabChart software (Version ??, ADInstruments, Sydney,
The acute psychological stress test we used was a ten-minute version of the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) (Gronwall, 1977). This has been shown to reliably perturb both the cardiovascular system and salivary cortisol levels (Phillips et al., 2005, Phillips et al., 2006, Phillips et al., 2009) and demonstrate good test-retest reliability (Willemsen et al., 1998). In this task, the participants were presented, via a compact disc player, a series of single digit numbers and were required to add the present number to the number previously presented and report their answer aloud. They then have to remember the last number that they heard and add it to the next number presented. For example, if they first two numbers presented were six and four they have to add them together and call out the answer “ten”. They then have to remember the …show more content…
These cardiovascular measures were taken during minutes 2, 4, 6 and 8 of the baseline, stress task and recovery periods. A single measure was also taken during minute four of the adaptation period for familiarity and to ensure the equipment was functional, however, this data was not recorded. Heart rate was also measured continuously from the QRS complex using electrocardiography (ECG) and spot electrodes placed on the right and left clavicle and lower left rib. Blood pressure (BP) was also continuously measured, this time from the left index finger using a Portapres Model-2? (Finapres Medical Systems, Amsterdam, the Netherlands). The data was continuously sampled at 200 Hz? using an analogue-digital converter (PowerLab, ADInstruments, Sydney, Australia) and analyzed using LabChart software (Version ??, ADInstruments, Sydney,