PSPAT: a program for spectral analysis of point events including a test for stationarity

Spectral analysis of heart rate variability is increasingly important in developmental psychology. Application of spectral analysis to the assessment of cardiac time series is not without problems. PSPAT was designed to deal with these problems. It includes a highly robust artifact correction routine, a stationarity test with a subsequent recursive procedure for selecting stationary stretches of data, and a spectral analysis technique for point processes computing auto-, cross-, and phase-spectra for cardiac and respiratory signals. Distinctive features of PSPAT will . . . be illustrated using data from a study aimed at establishing developmental trends in the relation between attention and the parasympathetic control of the human cardiac pacemaker.