Threat of bodily harm has opposing effects on cognition.

Abstract

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.

Explicit vs. implicit emotional processing: The interaction between processing type and executive control

“…In addition, this task design enabled us to verify that the relatively difficult task design-responding to two tasks at each trial-did not affect the pattern of results. Specifically, we expected that the results of Experiment 2 would be similar to the results of previous experiments that presented emotional stimuli prior to a single (EC) task (Cohen et al, 2011Hu et al, 2012).…”

“…Several studies that did examine emotional effect on each of the task conditions found emotional interference-delayed RT following emotional compared to neutral stimuli-for congruent, but not for incongruent stimuli. Namely, RTs for incongruent stimuli appearing after emotional stimuli were found to be similar to RTs for incongruent stimuli appearing after neutral stimuli (Cohen et al, 2011Hu et al, 2012). This effect was suggested to result from diminished emotional response when EC is recruited (Cohen et al, 2011Hu et al, 2012;Kalanthroff, Cohen, & Henik, 2013).…”

“…Emotional stimuli were found to enhance (Birk, Dennis, Shin, & Urry, 2011;Dennis & Chen, 2007;Hu, Bauer, Padmala, & Pessoa, 2012;Melcher, Obst, Mann, Paulus, & Gruber, 2012), disrupt (Hart, Green, Casp, & Belger, 2010;Lichtenstein-Vidne, Henik, & Safadi, 2012;Padmala, Bauer, & Pessoa, 2011) or have no effect on EC (Cohen, Henik, & Mor, 2011;Cohen, Henik, & Moyal, 2012;Cohen, Mor, & Henik, 2014). The discrepancy between these studies may be related to the fact that some of them report the influence of emotional stimuli on the congruity effect (i.e., RT for incongruent minus RT for congruent trials) and do not report the influence of emotional stimuli on each of the task conditions separately .…”

“…Namely, RTs for incongruent stimuli appearing after emotional stimuli were found to be similar to RTs for incongruent stimuli appearing after neutral stimuli (Cohen et al, 2011Hu et al, 2012). This effect was suggested to result from diminished emotional response when EC is recruited (Cohen et al, 2011Hu et al, 2012;Kalanthroff, Cohen, & Henik, 2013). Thus, emotion and EC seem to have reciprocal links; emotional stimuli enhance or impair EC, depending on the task design used (Kanske, 2012) and recruitment of EC processes reduces emotional effects (OkonSinger, Lichtenstein-Vidne, .…”

“…First, following previous literature (Cohen et al, 2011Hu et al, 2012), we predicted that emotional interference would be smaller for incongruent compared to congruent stimuli in all experiments. Importantly, we also predicted that the interaction between picture valence and congruity would be more robust in the explicit, compared to the implicit task.…”