Characteristics of antecedent focused regulation and response focused regulation in military persons with different levels of mental quality during fear emotion processes
Objective To investigate effects of antecedent focused regulation and response focused regulation on influent autonomic nervous responses of military persons with different mental quality levels during fear emotion processes. Methods Mental Quality Questionnaire of Military Persons was employed to test 841 military persons cluster sampled from Chongqing, and based on the results 150 participants were randomly cho sen , including three groups of military persons with high, moderate and low mental quality scores, respectively (n=50). Once the participants' fear emotion was elicited by video segment, 8-channel bio-feedback instru ment was applied to record their four autonomic nervous activity indicators, including skin conductance ( SC) , high frequency (Hf Norm) , standard deviation of all normal intervals (SDNN) and blood volume pulse (BVP) and recovery time. Results (1) Under cognitive-rumination condition, change value of SC [ ( - 2. 16 ± 2. 18) μΩ] in the high mental quality score group was significantly lower than that in the moderate mental quality score group [( -0.67 ±1.05) μΩ]. When adopting cognitive-avoidance, change value of BVP in the low mental quality score group was significantly higher than that in the moderate and high mental quality score groups [(1.26 ±2.54; 0.94 ±3.10) mmHg] (P<0.05), but change value of SDNN [(3.31 ±17.69) ms] in the low mental quality score group was lower than that in high mental quality score group [ (52.23 ±47.30) ms] (P <0.05). (2) SC recovery time under cognitive-avoidance condition [ (65.50 ±43.43) s] and BVP recovery time under cognitive-rumination condition [ (106.50 ±24. 95) s] in the low mental quality score group were significantly longer than those in the high mental quality score group. [ (68. 50 ±49. 39) s and (26. 50 ± 25.72) s, respectively] (P < 0. 05). (3) In the high mental quality score group, change value of SC in expression-revealing group [(-0. 43 ±0. 88) μΩ] was higher than that in the cognitive-rumination group [( -2. 16 ± 2. 18 ) μΩ] (P <0.05). And in low mental quality score group, change value of high frequency (Hf Norm) in expression-suppression group [ ( -4. 51 ± 12. 10) nU] was significantly lower than that in the cognitive-rumination group [(5. 18 ±3. 58) nU] and simply-watching group [(4.09 ±9. 48) nU] (P < 0. 05). (4) SC recovery time in the high mental quality score group when using expression-suppression [(73. 00 ±44.67) s] was longer than that when using expression-revealing [ (61. 50 ± 33. 09) s] (P < 0. 05). SC and BVP recovery time when using expression-revealing in the low mental quality score group [ (103. 50 ±38. 01) s and (21. 00 ±35.50) s, respectively] were longer than those in the high mental quality score group ( P < 0. 05 ) Conclusion Antecedent focused regulation fails to help military persons with low mental quality scores, and cognitive-rumination is much more beneficial for military persons with high mental quality scores to regulate their fear emotion. Expression revealing based on response focused regulation could help sympathetic indicators of military person with high mental quality scores recover.