Preliminary Evidence for using Heart Rate Variability as a Measure of Cognitive Effort

Researchers have suggested that language deficits in individuals with aphasia may result from an inability to adequately allocate effort to verbal tasks (e.g. Clark & Robin, 1995). Heart rate variability has been used as a physiological measure of cognitive effort (e.g. Aasman et al., 1987). The purpose of this study is to establish baseline data and verify the utility of HRV as an indicator of cognitive effort on tasks used with IWA. Relationships among neurologically intact participants’ accuracy on verbal and spatial n-back tasks, the physiological measure of effort (HRV), and perceptions of task difficulty will be reported