How are the emotional, cognitive and physiological processing of preschool girls and boys integrated?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56294/sctconf202360Keywords:
Positive Emotional Valence, Stroop Type Task, Heart Rate, Individual DifferencesAbstract
In recent decades, great importance has been attached to the study of emotional, cognitive, and physiological processes together. However, few studies analyze the integration of these processes through designs with preschool girls and boys. This study analyzes the emotional, cognitive and physiological processing of 4 and 5-year-old boys and girls. A Stroop-type task was taken under two conditions (neutral: n = 19, and positive: n = 23) to analyze the effect of the valence of the task on performance and heart rate. 42 children (42.9% girls) of 4 years (n = 17) and 5 years (n = 25) participated in the study. First, heart rate variation was analyzed before and during the task. The Wilcoxon test showed that in both conditions the heart rate increased during the performance of the Stroop-type task. Then, the variation of the heart rate between the conditions was compared using the Mann-Whitney U test, and a decrease in the heart rate was found in the positive condition of the task in the group of girls, and a trend in the group 5 year old boys and girls. Finally, in the neutral condition, the variation in heart rate was inversely correlated with the reaction time of the blocks with less cognitive demand. The results show that cognitive demand increases heart rate beyond the emotional valence of the task, and that positive valence produces a decrease in heart rate depending on age and gender. These findings emphasize the need to integrate the individual characteristics of girls and boys when studying emotional, cognitive, and physiological processing during development.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Verónica Adriana Ramírez, Eliana Ruetti (Author)
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