Anxiety, heart rate and their interrelation at mental stress in school children

Heart rate (HR) was measured in 63 ten year old boys during psychic stress induced by dental examination and the reading of a difficult test before a public. By means of the CMAS questionnaire, a teacher's questionnaire, rating of manifestations during the examination and selfcomparison by the children, we tried to assess the level of their anxiety. We looked for correlations between the individual measures of this personality trait and between anxiety and autonomic (HR) reactivity. From the aspect of HR the whole experiment appeared as a uniform, ever increasing stress, including socalled rest situations. HR was more affected by the stress situations than by individual reactivity. Concerning degree of anxiety we found a correlation only between the score of manifest anxiety (CMAS scale) and HR level: more anxious children had a lower HR under stress than less anxious children. We found no correlation between anxiety reported subjectively (CMAS) and objective observation (teacher, experimenter, other children). It was confirmed that in assessing the child's reactivity in stress the intensity of the stimulus must be taken into account. An analysis of the literature has shown that the results and their interpretation depend much on the methods used.