The Study of Trait Anxiety Effects on Skin Temperature Control

Abstract

Peripheral skin temperature(ST) is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, and the study involved in its voluntary control is useful as an application to peripheral cardiovascular disorders. Especially, many biofeedback (BF) studies have been done to investigate variable factors about ST control. The purpose of this study is to compare the differences induced by trait anxiety during the process of acquiring control over one's ST. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used as the index of anxiety. First, a screening investigation about trait anxiety scores was conducted. Secondly, high and low trait anxiety groups were trained in ST-BF. The assigned tasks were both increasing and decreasing their non-dominant index finger using visual feedback stimulus. The results suggested that high anxiety subjects were superior to low anxiety subjects in controlling their ST. Further, the difference in difficulty between the two tasks was shown. Each group found it easier to do the decrease task, but they couldn't increase their temperature. In addition, an issue of the strategy for ST control is also discussed.