The effect of background audio and audiovisual stimuli on students' autonomic responses during and after an experimental academic examination.

BACKGROUND: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown during the online-distant education period, certain students tended to combine their courses and homework with TV or social media news or other media content, such as classical music, including a wealth of audio and audiovisual stimuli. As the audio and audiovisual stimuli existing in a learning environment may affect students' autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses negatively, the present study aimed to monitor the impact of background TV, classical music, and silence on students' ANS activity represented by heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), blood volume amplitude (BVA), and skin conductance level (SCL) during and after an experimental academic examination. METHOD: Seventy-six students were randomly allocated to background TV, classical music, or silence groups. The experiment with repeated measures design consisted of four consecutive periods: baseline, anticipation, challenge, and recovery, lasting 4 min each. RESULTS: Within-subject analyses indicated significant HRV decrement only in the background TV group. Regardless of the experimental groups, HR and SCL increased while BVA decreased during the task. In addition, the between-subject analysis showed that the background TV group experienced significantly larger changes in HR and HRV parameters compared to the other experimental groups relative to their respective baseline measurements. CONCLUSIONS: Based on these results, we concluded that relative to classical music and silence, background TV, including audiovisual and verbal stimuli, extant in a learning environment might raise students' sympathetic activity. Further, classical music, without lyrics, may suppress the withdrawal of vagal activity and elevate the autonomic regulation capacity during the academic reading comprehension task. HRV is a more valid and reliable indicator of students' autonomic responses during a challenging academic task.

Autonomic Cardiac Activity Among Novice Archers During Baseline, Shooting, and Recovery.

Tok, S, Dal, N, Zekioglu, A, Çatikkas, F, Balikçi, I, and Dogan, E. Autonomic cardiac activity among novice archers during baseline, shooting and recovery. J Strength Cond Res 34(9): 2627-2635, 2020-In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether heart rate variability (HRV) of novice archers may vary during baseline, shooting, and recovery periods. In addition, we aimed to explore whether HRV may have different patterns between successful and less successful archers and man and woman archers. The sample consisted of 39 (12 woman) novice archers ranging in age from 21 to 27. Baseline HRV activity was measured in the first stage of the experiment. Then, participants shot 10 arrows, from 18 m to an 80 cm diameter target, whereas their HRV was measured. Lastly, HRV recovery response was measured immediately after shooting. HRV was represented as low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF), and LF/HF ratio. When considering the entire sample, repeated measures of analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that only HF power differed among baseline, shooting, and recovery periods [F(2, 76) = 6.90, p = 0.002, ω = 0.15]. When the data partitioned, based on the median split of the shooting scores, repeated measures of ANOVA demonstrated that none of the HRV components differed in the less successful group from baseline to recovery. However, in the successful group, both LF [F(1.47, 30.98) = 4.75, p = 0.024, ω = 0.18] and HF [F(1.54, 32.37) = 6.61, p = 0.007, ω = 0.24] power significantly differed among baseline, shooting, and recovery. No differences were found between man and woman archers in terms of HRV indices. The results of the present study indicated that physical activities requiring the use of perceptual motor skills, in addition to physical qualities, may lead to different HRV responses. Moreover, coaches aiming to develop archers' shooting accuracy may take into account LF power measured during an arrow shooting session.