Individual Differences in Imagery Ability and Pavlovian Heart Rate Decelerative Conditioning

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Abstract
The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the role of imagery ability in Pavlovian HR decelerative conditioning with a head‐up to head‐down body tilt as the US. From imagery theories of conditioning (e.g., King, 1973), it was hypothesized that the CR of subjects with good imagery abilities should be more similar to the UR than the CR of subjects with poor imagery abilities. The Betts QMI was used to select 32 subjects for their imagery ability. All subjects were treated identically during the course of the experimental session. Following 10 CS‐US acquisition trials, the HR CR was assessed on a second‐by‐second basis during 9 CS‐alone test trials. The data provided support for the hypothesis: the form of the CR was significantly different for the two groups. The CR of the good imagers remained below baseline for 10 sec (the duration of the actual tilt‐US) while the CR of poor imagers returned to baseline within that period although the average magnitude of the CR for good and poor imagers did not differ. Implications of these data for human Pavlovian HR conditioning and applied (e.g., desensitization) psychophysiological research are discussed.