Infant Cognitive Psychophysiology

Abstract

Psychophysiology may be defined as “the study of relations between psychological manipulations and resulting physiological responses, measured in the living organism, to promote understanding of the relation between mental and bodily processes” (Andreassi, 1989). The main impetus of psychophysiology is to relate psychological behavior to underlying physiological systems. Psychophysiology is also the study of parallel relations between psychological behavior and physiological systems. Psychophysiological research typically uses noninvasive recording methods and human subjects. Other scientific areas, such as physiological psychology, psychobiology, and behavioral neuroscience study physiological-psychological relations. These fields use more invasive physiological measures and, as a result, use animal models rather than human subjects in the study of behavior.