Stress reduces attention to irrelevant information: Evidence from the Stroop task

Booth, Robert W.; Sharma, Dinkar

doi:10.1007/s11031-009-9141-5

Cited by 39 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Chajut & Algom, 2003), this experiment showed a clear reduction in Stroop interference under stress. For the first time, this happened even though the Stroop task included no congruent trials; this removes the concern raised by Booth and Sharma (2009) that the effect might depend on the presence of congruent trials, which can influence the strategies employed by participants (Bugg & Crump, 2012;Lindsay & Jacoby, 1994). These results, together with the fact that stress did not influence negative priming or conflict adaptation, support cue utilisation accounts: they suggest that stress reduces Stroop interference because it withdraws attentional resources from less-relevant cues, including the word.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If stress somehow reduces participants' strategic or executive adjustment in response to the congruent trials, this will manifest itself as an apparent reduction in Stroop interference. Indeed, Booth and Sharma's (2009; although see Gur & Algom, 2016) results suggested that stress only reduced interference when congruent trials were present. It is therefore important to confirm whether stress still reduces interference in a Stroop task with no congruent trials.…”

Section: Congruent Trial Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reduced Stroop interference under stress: Decreased cue utilisation, not increased executive control

Booth

2018

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Since the 1960s, researchers have been reporting that stress reduces Stroop interference. This is puzzling, as stress and anxiety typically have deleterious effects on cognitive control and performance. The traditional explanation is that stress reduces 'cue utilisation': it withdraws attentional resources from less-relevant stimuli (including the distracter word), meaning that the target colour is left with a stronger influence over response-selection. However, it could also be that stress somehow boosts distracter inhibition, or some other aspect of executive control. To test these two accounts, 59 students completed a Stroop task featuring occasional startlingly-loud sounds (high stress), or the same sounds at a lower, comfortable volume (low stress). Alongside standard Stroop interference, two measures of executive control-negative priming and conflict adaptation-were calculated from the Stroop data. Stress produced a clear reduction of Stroop interference, but it did not influence negative priming, and no conflict adaptation effects were detected at all. These findings support the cue utilisation account. Furthermore, for the first time stress was shown to reduce Stroop interference in a task with no congruent trials, showing that the effect does not result from stress's modulating any strategy changes participants might make in response to congruent trials.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Congruent Trial Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced Stroop interference under stress: Decreased cue utilisation, not increased executive control

Booth

2018

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…Several studies have reported a reduction of conflict effects during stressful manipulations, including time pressure, threat to the ego, and aversive noise stimulation (e.g. Booth & Sharma, 2009; Callaway, 1959; Chajut & Algom, 2003; Hartley & Adams, 1974; Kluge, 1992; Renaud & Blondin, 1997). However, in our task, the neutral Stroop condition revealed a robust slowing down of RT during the threat condition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threat of bodily harm has opposing effects on cognition.

Bauer

Padmala

et al. 2012

Emotion

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Several theoretical frameworks have suggested that anxiety/stress impairs cognitive performance. A competing prediction is made by attentional narrowing models that predict that stress decreases the processing of task-irrelevant items, thus benefiting performance when task-irrelevant information interferes with behavior. Critically, previous studies have not evaluated these competing frameworks when potent emotional manipulations are involved. Here, we used threat of bodily harm preceding a color-word Stroop task to test these claims. We found a basic effect of threat consisting of a slowing down of performance during neutral Stroop trials. Furthermore, both facilitation and interference scores were affected by threat of shock in a way that was consistent with a reduced-distractor effect. Taken together, we interpret our findings in terms of two opposing effects of stress on cognitive performance. Although partly consistent with the attentional narrowing hypothesis, both resource models and cognitive breadth models require revision in order to account for the results.

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“…This possibility is supported by a number of studies using stressors other than shock such as ego threat, time pressure, or loud noises, which have been shown to reduce stress interference on conflict and Stroop tasks (O'Malley and Poplawsky, 1971; O'Malley and Gallas, 1977; Chajut and Algom, 2003; Booth and Sharma, 2009). This may be due to a general increased in non-specific arousal.…”

Section: Attention/controlmentioning

confidence: 96%

The impact of anxiety upon cognition: perspectives from human threat of shock studies

Robinson¹,

Vytal²,

Cornwell³

et al. 2013

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

476

429

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Anxiety disorders constitute a sizeable worldwide health burden with profound social and economic consequences. The symptoms are wide-ranging; from hyperarousal to difficulties with concentrating. This latter effect falls under the broad category of altered cognitive performance which is the focus of this review. Specifically, we examine the interaction between anxiety and cognition focusing on the translational threat of unpredictable shock paradigm; a method previously used to characterize emotional responses and defensive mechanisms that is now emerging as valuable tool for examining the interaction between anxiety and cognition. In particular, we compare the impact of threat of shock on cognition in humans to that of pathological anxiety disorders. We highlight that both threat of shock and anxiety disorders promote mechanisms associated with harm avoidance across multiple levels of cognition (from perception to attention to learning and executive function)—a “hot” cognitive function which can be both adaptive and maladaptive depending upon the circumstances. This mechanism comes at a cost to other functions such as working memory, but leaves some functions, such as planning, unperturbed. We also highlight a number of cognitive effects that differ across anxiety disorders and threat of shock. These discrepant effects are largely seen in “cold” cognitive functions involving control mechanisms and may reveal boundaries between adaptive (e.g., response to threat) and maladaptive (e.g., pathological) anxiety. We conclude by raising a number of unresolved questions regarding the role of anxiety in cognition that may provide fruitful avenues for future research.

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Stress reduces attention to irrelevant information: Evidence from the Stroop task

Cited by 39 publications

References 22 publications

Reduced Stroop interference under stress: Decreased cue utilisation, not increased executive control

Reduced Stroop interference under stress: Decreased cue utilisation, not increased executive control

Threat of bodily harm has opposing effects on cognition.

The impact of anxiety upon cognition: perspectives from human threat of shock studies

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