Age and extraversion differences in heart rate reactivity during working memory tasks.

Ann Pearman,Shevaun D Neupert,Gilda E Ennis,Jennifer Morozink Boylan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0245539

Abstract

Research and theory have shown a link between heart rate reactivity during cognitive testing and extraversion in younger adults; however, similar work has not been conducted with older adults. This study was designed to explore age and extraversion-related differences in within-person heart rate (HR) reactivity during two working memory tasks of varying difficulty using a multi-level modeling approach. Across 570 total within-person assessments of continuous HR monitoring, 28 younger adults (M = 19.76, SD = 1.15) and 29 older adults (M = 71.19, SD = 6.63) were administered two working memory tasks (backward digit span and n-back). There were no age differences in reactivity during the backward digit span. However, similar to previous findings, on the more difficult n-back task, younger adults low in extraversion showed a trend toward higher HR reactivity than young adults high in extraversion. Interestingly, the older adults showed the opposite pattern in that lower extraversion older adults were less reactive than the higher extraversion older adults who showed the steepest increase in HR. The HR increase of the older adults high in extraversion may be an indication of higher engagement in this more difficult task. Individual differences in extraversion need to be taken into account when administering working memory tasks in older adults.

Highlights

Extraversion is the personality trait most associated with sociability, excitability, and emotional expressiveness [1, 2]
The only extraversion–performance relationship was with younger adults on the Backward Digit Span (BDS) (r [26] = .48, p = .01) with high extraversion relating to better performance which is commonly found in younger adults [29]
If high extraversion older adults are highly engaged in and believe they have the capacity to succeed on difficult cognitive tasks like the n-back, they may put forth more effort which would be commensurate with the higher levels of heart rate (HR) activation seen during the n-back compared to the BDS

Summary

Introduction

Extraversion is the personality trait most associated with sociability, excitability, and emotional expressiveness [1, 2]. Adults high in extraversion tend to endorse items related to engagement with the outside world, social activity, and assertiveness. Eysenck (1955) first suggested that people low in extraversion may be more sensitive to social interactions because a lower threshold for autonomic nervous system arousal makes them more physiologically reactive than people high in extraversion [3]. These findings have been both confirmed and extended [4,5,6,7,8] since those initial studies.

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