Further Evidence of the Possibility To Exploit Anticipatory Physiological Signals To Assist Implicit Intuition for Random Events

Abstract

With this study we aimed to replicate and extending the findings obtained by Tressoldi. Martinelli, Zaccaria & Massaccesi (2009) who showed that in participants with high scores on the Tellegen Absorption Scale (score>20), anticipatory heart rate responses in an implicit pre-alerting paradigm could be used to improve their intuitive decisions on random events. In this study, two pools of pleasant and alerting sounds were used to test the generality of previous findings. By using fifty participants it was also possible to study whether gender could be a further moderator of the observed effect. Results confirm the findings of Tressoldi et al. (2009) clarifying that the effect was present only in females. Females with a high level of absorption predict more hits than females with a low level. Further statistical analysis suggest that absorption acts as an implicit cognitive "filter" only for pleasant sounds