Cognitive Processing Under Stressful Conditions: The Effects of Stress on Selective Attention

This study is an attempt to expand upon previous findings implicating a bias in selective\ud attention for anxious subjects, to determine whether a similar bias in selective attention is true\ud for subjects under academic and/or social stress. Seventy- seven Haverford College Students\ud who were grouped according to high or low social, academic and trait stress, completed a\ud dichotic listening task with academic, social or neutral words distracters. Shadowing errors and\ud probe reaction times were analyzed. The results presented a complex set of findings based on\ud subjects grouping into high or low trait, social or academic stress; target wordlist category\ud (academic, social or neutral); and dependent measure (shadowing errors or probe reaction times).\ud Overall, subjects displayed more shadowing errors when high in academic stress. Subjects low in\ud trait stress were overall slower to respond to the probe overall compared to subjects high in trait\ud stress. Subjects who were low in trait and academic stress were slower to respond to the probe\ud presented during the neutral wordlist when they were high in social stress. Subjects who were\ud low in trait and social stress were slower to respond to the probe presented during the academic\ud wordlist when they were high in academic stress compared to when they were low in academic\ud stress. These findings suggest that academic stress generally disrupts the ability to select out\ud distracter words, whereas high trait stress leads to overall better performance on a secondary\ud probe reaction task. In addition, the findings suggest that social and academic state stress lead to\ud different biases in selective attention towards neutral distracter words for social stress and\ud towards academic distracter words for academic stress, when low in all other categories