Cognitive factors in heart rate conditioning.

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Abstract
The conditioning and semantic and color generalization of the heart rate was studied as a function of different cognitive expectancies of the Ss. Cognitive expectancies were manipulated prior to conditioning by means of different instructions to the three experimental groups. A high correspondence was found between heart rate and verbalizable expectancies. Clear evidence of heart rate conditioning was obtained only in those cases where S could verbalize the relationship between the CS and UCS. Those Ss who were informed that there would be no more shocks at the beginning of the extinction trials showed almost a complete loss of the CR without experiencing nonreinforced presentations of the CS. Heart rate responses to nonconditioned stimuli also varied as a function of cognitive expectancies. There was some indication that observed differences in heart rate could be used to predict differences in verbalized expectancies. There was no evidence of either semantic or color generalization of the conditioned heart rate. This finding was considered consistent with the above since Ss did not include such generalized expectancies in their verbalizations.