Cardiovascular Reactivity and Adaptation to Recurrent Psychological Stress: Effects of Prior Task Exposure

The effects of prior task exposure on cardiovascular reactivity to stress were examined in two experiments by randomly assigning participants to repeated exposure groups that performed mental arithmetic pretest and test tasks versus delayed exposure groups that performed only the test task after prolonged rest. Impedance cardiographic and blood pressure measures were recorded continuously from 60 undergraduate men in Experiment 1 and 112 undergraduate men and women in Experiment 2. Task repetition attenuated cardiovascular reactivity and improved task performance in repeated exposure groups (p < .001), suggesting an integrated process of behavioral adaptation. During the test task, delayed exposure groups showed greater cardiac reactivity (p < .01), but not vascular reactivity, than repeated exposure groups. Thus, cardiac reactivity varied as a specific function of prior task exposure, whereas vascular reactivity varied as a general function of time.