Individual Differences in Physiological Measures

Standard practice for collecting and analyzing cardiac activity data involves establishing a baseline of cardiac activity and assessing deviations from this baseline. However, empirical data on how these baseline measurements may vary within individuals over time and across contexts remains sparse. Here, we were interested in whether individuals differ in resting baseline data, both between-subjects as well as between-session. Overall, we found that resting baseline measures differ both between-persons, but also substantially between-session within the same participant. Critically, these results suggest that researchers should interpret resting baseline activity as an estimate of cardiac activity at rest that is specific to the session in which it was collected. Please see publication for further details.

Through these set of projects, I gained experience with ecological momentary assessment protocols (both programming and implementation), data cleaning, and collecting and cleaning physiological measures such as heartrate and respiration rate. I also had the opportunity on one of the projects to be the team lead, where I learned how to manage a team of 12 undergraduates/graduate students with both managing complex scheduling and conflict resolution. Through all three studies involving intertemporal choice, I collaborated extensively with other graduate students within the lab, as well as a team of researchers at Northeastern University.