Vita. / Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

Mitral Valve Prolapse Syndrome (MVPS) is a benign psychosomatic cardiac condition that can severely impair one's quality of life. Symptoms targeted in this study include, atypical chest pain, palpitations, anxiety, panic, and shortness of breath.This study was undertaken to examine the effects of a diaphragmatic breathing intervention on the symptoms and underlying mechanism of dysautonomia in a small group of symptomatic females with MVPS. The intervention was based on both yoga theory and cardiorespiratory empirical studies.Seven of eight participant's completed the nine week study using a single subject multiple baseline design across subjects. Participant's began a respiratory retraining intervention, in a weekly staggered pair start, after the first week of baseline measurement. Respiratory training consisted of a four week training in diaphragmatic breathing with home practice three times a day.Autonomic, behavioral, and cognitive systems were assessed. Dependent measures included State and Trait Anxiety, Anxiety Sensitivity, a Symptom Checklist, and Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA). RSA is a current noninvasive measure of parasympathetic tone. Data on thoracic and abdominal respiratory predominance, respiration rate, diet, exercise, and adherence were also gathered.Data were analyzed via visual inspection of trends and phase average changes. Treatment effect sizes were calculated for standardized measures to indicate the meaningfulness of change.Two of the seven participants demonstrated a decrease in total symptom frequencies over the course of intervention. One participant demonstrated a weekly progression of lowered state anxiety scores from baseline through intervention. In terms of phase averages, three participants showed a lowering of state anxiety. All seven participants demonstrated lowered trait anxiety scores from pre to post intervention. Two of the seven participants demonstrated a meaningful pre to post intervention decrease in anxiety sensitivity. Respiratory training was effective in stabilizing abdominal respiration. Results regarding vagal tone could not be determined due to unreliable ECG data.In general, results were poor with several inconsistencies. Adherence rates were low and it did not appear that a therapeutic level of change in respiration rate was achieved. Controlling respiration rate may be a critical factor in the therapeutic effectiveness of respiratory retraining interventions. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Given the presumed importance of cardiovascular reactivity and the role of anger in the development of hypertension and coronary heart disease, this study is the first to jointly examine three related areas (i.e. gender effects, anger direction preference, and opportunity/no opportunity to aggress following an anger Inducing situation). The present study tested the following hypotheses: a) that cardiovascular reactivity would vary as a function of subjects' gender and direction preference; b) that the rate of cardiovascular recovery would vary as a function of anger direction preference and opportunity/no opportunity to aggress; c) that the subjective feelings of anger after harassment would vary as a function of gender, anger direction preference, and opportunity/no opportunity to aggress; and d) that the evaluation of experimenter's competency and performance would vary as a function of anger preference. 56 females and 49 males executed a math task while being harassed for "poor performance". Next, they were randomly assigned to either write a negative evaluation of the frustrator or to copy a neutral paragraph and then to circle some letters in another paragraph. Heart rate and blood pressure were measured intermittently throughout. Subjects' preferred mode of anger expression (i.e. anger-in versus anger-out) had been previously assessed and cross validated by self as well as peer evaluations. Results indicated that gender was a better predictor than anger direction preference for cardiovascular reactivity to harassment. Complex patterns of recovery were detected with Intriguing sex differences. Results on male diastolic recovery were consistent with a matching hypothesis of anger direction preference but only for anger-out males. In addition, subjective anger for males was related to opportunity/no opportunity conditions, whereas females did not show such a relationship. Female anger-ln's showed quicker systolic recovery than anger-out's. Lastly, the evaluation of experimenter's competency and performance did not vary as a function of anger preference. Therapeutic implications of the findings within the context of anger control as well as trends for future research are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate