Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of contingency between bodily symptom and aversive situation on the attention to bodily symptom and on the symptom perception. Under four separate experimental conditions varying the contingent pattern of aversive situation, twenty subjects (9 men and 11 women) underwent experimental tasks in which they pedaled bicycle ergometer adjusting to intermittent tone. Subjects paid more attention to their heart rate during the condition in which occurrence of aversive situation was contingent on "Racing heart" (HR-con condition) than in the other three conditions. Although the level of actual heart rate in the HR-con condition was not different from the level of that in the other conditions, subjects perceived "Racing heart" more frequently in the HR-con condition than in the other conditions.
