Development of psychological and physiological sensitivity indices to stress based on state anxiety and heart rate

This experiment was designed to compare sensitive and insensitive children under psychological stress during performance on a motor skill. A new index for sensitivity based on the psychological and physiological data (heart rate) was introduced. The subjects were 50 Japanese children. Although experimental groups received competitive instruction and were given the mirror-drawing task, a control group did not receive such instruction. The sensitive group made fewer errors than the insensitive group and the control group. These results suggest that the combined index is a more useful measure of psychological stress than a single index.