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Psychophysiology (1992). 29(6):742-750.
Alternate cardiovascular baseline assessment techniques: vanilla or
resting baseline.
Jennings JR, Kamarck T, Stewart C, Eddy M,
Johnson P.
University of
Pittsburgh, PA.
The accurate evaluation of cardiovascular reactions to psychological
challenge requires stable baselines against which change can be
evaluated. When more than one challenge is employed, the recovery of
this baseline becomes important in order to avoid carryover effects.
Resting periods, even those of 20 min or more, do not guarantee baseline
stability. We compared a 20-min resting condition and a new form of
baseline condition in 48 college men using video tasks as the
psychological challenges. The new form was a minimally demanding color
detection task, termed the "vanilla" baseline condition. A 10-min
version and a 20-min version of this condition were tested. Comparisons
to 10-min resting baselines were made using our prior work and values
from the literature. Vanilla baseline conditions were shown to be equal
to or better than resting baseline conditions using criteria of between-
and within-baseline stability, amplitude and significance of
responsivity, and generalizability between sessions on separate days.
Ten-minute resting baselines also showed acceptable stability,
questioning the value of lengthy baselines. The good performance of the
10-min vanilla baseline in initial and replication samples supported its
utility for estimating baselines for many purposes.
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