Effects of Stress on Selective Attention: Bias or Deficiency?

The main goal of this study was to examine whether stress biases selective attention in a\ud similar way as anxiety, with specificity and state/trait interactions playing a role, or whether\ud it creates a general deficiency in this process. Subjects participated in a dichotic listening\ud task in which they listened to neutral passages to be shadowed on one ear and either\ud academic-stress, social-stress, or neutral words on the other ear. They were also instructed\ud to respond simultaneously to a probe that randomly appeared on the computer screen.\ud Subjects were then divided into 8 different academic-stress/social-stress/trait-stress\ud combination groups for analysis. Results provided no support for the general deficiency\ud hypothesis; however, specific state-stress/trait-stress/word-list interactions provided some\ud support for the hypothesized similarity between stress and anxiety. In addition, main\ud effects of trait-stress on probe reaction time and of academic-stress on shadowing errors\ud were observed. These results have important implications for the way stress might affect\ud people differently, depending on factors such as personality traits, type of stress, and the\ud nature of environmental "distracters" present