Differentiation between protective reflexes: cardiac defense and startle

Rise time and duration are two parametric characteristics of the eliciting stimulus frequently used to differentiate among psychophysiological reflexes. The present research varied the duration (study 1) and rise time (study 2) of an intense acoustic stimulus to dissociate cardiac defense and cardiac startle using the eyeblink response as the external criterion of startle. In each study, 100 participants were presented with five white noise stimuli of 105 dB under one of five duration (50, 100, 250, 500, and 1000 ms) or rise time (0, 24, 48, 96, and 240 ms) conditions. Cardiac defense was affected by stimulus duration, present only in the 500- and 1000-ms conditions, but not by stimulus rise time, present in all rise time conditions. Rise time affected blink startle, but did not selectively alter the short latency accelerative component of the heart rate response, thus questioning whether it reflects startle.