Mild acute stress improves response speed without impairing accuracy or interference control in two selective attention tasks: Implications for theories of stress and cognition

Abstract

Acute stress is generally thought to impair performance on tasks thought to rely on selective attention. This effect has been well established for moderate to severe stressors, but no study has examined how a mild stressor-the most common type of stressor-influences selective attention. In addition, no study to date has examined how stress influences the component processes involved in overall selective attention task performance, such as controlled attention, automatic attentional activation, decision-making, and motor abilities. To address these issues, we randomly assigned 107 participants to a mild acute stress or control condition. As expected, the mild acute stress condition showed a small but significant increase in cortisol relative to the control condition. Following the stressor, we assessed attention with two separate flanker tasks. One of these tasks was optimized to investigate component attentional processes using computational cognitive modeling, whereas the other task employed mouse-tracking to illustrate how response conflict unfolded over time. The results for both tasks showed that mild acute stress decreased response time (i.e., increased response speed) without influencing accuracy or interference control. Further, computational modeling and mouse-tracking analyses indicated that these effects were due to faster motor action execution time for chosen actions. Intriguingly, however, cortisol responses were unrelated to any of the observed effects of mild stress. These results have implications for theories of stress and cognition, and highlight the importance of considering motor processes in understanding the effects of stress on cognitive task performance.

Post-Encoding Stress Does Not Enhance Memory Consolidation: The Role of Cortisol and Testosterone Reactivity

“…This result is consistent with a few studies that failed to find stress effects [18][19][20]. However, it contrasts with most of the studies carried out on this issue, which reported enhancing effects on free recall [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] and impairing effects [17]. Several factors could be underlying this lack of a stress effect.…”

“…Thus, moderate cortisol levels facilitate memory consolidation, whereas low and high cortisol levels impair it. Therefore, it is conceivable that the MAST is a stressor that elicits a stronger cortisol response than the CPT [ 50 ], the stressor used in most of the studies that report enhancing stress effects [ 6 , 7 , 9 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. In any case, all these issues should be taken into consideration in future research.…”

“…This model suggests that cortisol blocks memory retrieval processes in favor of consolidation processes, facilitating the consolidation of new important information related to the stressor that should be recalled in similar future situations. Supporting this theory, a large number of studies have investigated the effects of acute stress on memory consolidation, that is, when the stressor is applied shortly after learning (i.e., post-encoding stress), with improvements found in young people [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. However, not all previous papers have found these results because impairing effects [ 17 ] or even non-effects [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ] have also been reported.…”

“…However, not all previous papers have found these results because impairing effects [ 17 ] or even non-effects [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ] have also been reported. Most of the papers showing an enhancing effect of stress on memory consolidation have found this effect for emotional (specifically negative) material, but not for neutral material [ 6 , 9 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 15 , 19 ], although Preuss and Wolf [ 10 ] found enhanced recall for neutral material, but not for emotional (i.e., positive and negative) material. Furthermore, some studies have found a positive [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 20 ] or curvilinear [ 7 , 14 ] relationship between the cortisol response to the stressor and memory performance.…”

Promoting Successful Cognitive Aging: A Ten-Year Update

“…When the stress response is moderate and controlled, it can benefit the way people learn and adapt [ 308 ]. For example, mild stress improves task accuracy by facilitating cognitive functions like selective attention [ 309 ]. Acute and chronic moderate and severe stress, however, have been shown to be deleterious to cognitive processes.…”