Why would anyone in their right mind do Psychophysiology Graduate Methods January 27, 2003 Becky Ray

What is Psychophysiology? Psychophysiology is an interdisciplinary field that emphasizes multiple levels of analysis. It is concerned with the relationship between the mind and brain?

Psychophysiology Approach The human organism is thought of as embodied physically. Thoughts and feelings are chemical and electrical actions that may have influences on the rest of the organism as well as the social dynamics of the situation. Can include measures of autonomic, somatic, neural, endocrinologic and immunologic processes and the interrelations between them.

Psychophysiology Approach Continued Psychophysiology is not designed to replace self-report or social observations but to enrich our understanding of what the phenomenon of interest may be like when some of the phenomenon of interest may not be in the organism’s awareness.

Psychophysiology useful for what domains? Cognitive psychophysiology – concerns the relationship between elements of human information processing and physiological events. Social psychophysiology – concerns the study of the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of human association as related to and revealed by physiological measures, including the reciprocal relationship between physiological and social systems.

Psychophysiology useful for what domains? Developmental psychophysiology – concerns the study of ontological changes in psychophysiological relationships as well as the study of psychological measurements. Clinical psychophysiology – concerns the study of disorders in the organismic-environmental transactions and ranges from the assessment of disorders to interventions and treatments.

Psychophysiology useful for what domains? Environmental psychophysiology – concerns the study of vagaries of organism-place interdependencies as well as the health consequences of design through unobtrusive physiological measurements. Applied psychophysiology – concerns the implementation of psychophysiological principles in practice, such as operant training (“biofeedback”), desensitization, relaxation, and the detection of deception.

Issues of interest in psychophysiology Phasic vs. Tonic: Is the phenomenon of interest phasic (temporary) or tonic (ongoing)? –Understanding whether your phenomenon of interest is phasic or tonic and what that might look like, effects when you measure and what kinds of measurement you take.

Issues of interest in psychophysiology Appropriate baseline –Whenever you measure a physiological response, you must compare it to a baseline. –Each individual is different and has different resting levels of activation, and different variability in responses. –To understand what the physiological response due to the event of interest is, one must partial out or subtract the resting response. –Finding the appropriate baseline that does not induce further physiological responding is important.

What do we study in the Stanford Psychophysiology Lab? Emotion regulation involves both the study of cognitive, emotional, social and health areas.

Multiple Response Systems Monitored Sympathetic – skin conductance, vasoconstriction, PEP Parasympathetic – RSA Cardiac – heart rate, blood pressure Respiration – Thorax and abdomen Somatic activity Facial EMG – corragator, zygomatic and orbicular occuli Self-report Non-verbal expression Social impact

Kinds of data Categorical data about the person: gender, ethnicity, diagnosis, Control or Experimental Ordinal data: coded behavioral data, self-report data Interval data: All physiological data –Period time averages (a mean for HR for entire period) –Smaller intervals (60 second or less averages) –Real time amplitudes (exact change in amplitude in < 1sec)

Possible problems Non-normal data – special care has to be taken to inspect whether the data is non-normal and to apply appropriate corrective measurements. Heteroscedasticity –manipulating psychophysiological responses by having subjects perform a task, may change the variability of the response system that will produce heteroscedasticity. Different time courses – different response systems have different rise and fall times and may prove difficult to find immediate and easy correspondence.

Statistics Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) or Mulitivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) – depends on the questions of interest. Correlation – Can correlate self-report with physiological measures at different time points (Fischer z) to find coherence of response systems. Time series analysis – when there are multiple time points in an event.