Heart rate differences between targets and non targets in intuition tasks

This study reports the results of one experiment and a replication, aimed at investigating heart rate changes related to a pure intuition task. In each experiment, twelve subjects were required to guess which of the four pictures presented in sequence for about 10 seconds, was the target. Each subject performed 20 trials. In each trial the target was automatically selected using a pseudo-random algorithm. Heart rate was recorded (see Method section for details) during the pictures presentation. In the first experiment, a statistical significant increment of heart rate associated to targets with respect non targets was observed. The replication experiment with new twelve subjects confirmed the data obtained in the main experiment. These findings support the hypothesis that heart rate is related not only to overt but also to covert cognitive activity such as that involved in intuition tasks, giving convergent evidence to the models describing our intuitive cognitive activity as a double, partial independent information processing system.