Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3062 PA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Sci Rep. 2023 Feb 2;13(1):1908. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-28781-z.
Psychological flow is a state of full task immersion. The present study was conducted to test the hypothesis that psychological flow is positively related to activity of the phasic locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system, which supports decisions on whether to engage in or disengage from the current activity. Subjective flow was assessed among 36 participants who engaged in a gamified version of the n-back task with various difficulty levels (0, 1, 2, and 3 back). During the tasks, continuous pupil diameter and EEG were recorded. We found that psychological flow and two presumed indicators of the phasic LC-NE activity (pupil dilation and EEG P300 amplitude) fit inverted U-shapes with increasing subjective task difficulty. Moreover, a positive linear relationship between psychological flow and pupil dilation (not with P300) was found. In conclusion, this study indicates the involvement of the LC-NE system in the peak experience of flow.
心理流畅是一种完全沉浸于任务的状态。本研究旨在验证以下假设，即心理流畅与相位蓝斑去甲肾上腺素（LC-NE）系统的活动呈正相关，该系统支持决定是否参与或脱离当前活动。在进行不同难度水平（0、1、2 和 3 步回溯）的游戏化 n 回任务时，评估了 36 名参与者的主观流畅感。在任务期间，连续记录瞳孔直径和 EEG。我们发现心理流畅度和两个假定的相位 LC-NE 活动指标（瞳孔扩张和 EEG P300 幅度）随着主观任务难度的增加呈倒 U 形。此外，还发现心理流畅度与瞳孔扩张之间存在正线性关系（与 P300 无关）。总之，这项研究表明 LC-NE 系统参与了流畅体验的高峰。
