Effects of physiological arousal level, frustration, and task complexity on performance.

This paper investigates the effects of initial heart-rate level, frustration, and task complexity on digit-symbol performance. Low (LD) and high (HD) heart-rate Ss worked on a digit-symbol problem immediately before and after a frustration manipulation which raised heart rate about 20 beats/min. The results indicated that HD Ss achieved higher initial performance scores than LD Ss on tasks of relatively low complexity; however, following frustration LD Ss manifested a significantly greater increment in performance than HD Ss. The latter group showed a trend toward a decrement in performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)