Child's Heart Beat: Developmental Changes in Heart Rate and Attention duringMiddle Childhood

摘要

The main goal of the thesis is to document developmental changes in heart rateresponsitivity and attention during the middle childhood period. The thesis consists of two parts--a methodological and an empirical part. The methodological part concerns the analysis of heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is a complex time series and the standard procedure to extract the contribution of specific periodicities is spectral analysis. The empirical part of the thesis first presents a cross-sectional analysis of heart rate responsitivity recorded during the performance of the oddball task. The results obtained using the reaction time task are also reported. Age-changes in heart rate responsitivity both from a cross-sectional as well as a longitudinal vantage point are examined. Finally, the thesis is concluded by discussing the results vis-a-vis the organizational framework presented in the introduction.