Effect Of Acute Psychological Stress On Attention Processing

Acute psychological stress is ubiquitous in our everyday lives and known to have a profound impact on a variety of cognitive processes,ranging from attention and cognitive control to memory and social cognition.A series of neuroendocrine responses were induced by acute psychological stress.Stress effect on cognition require the stress-induced surge of corticosteroids(cortisol in humans),acting in concert with catecholamine and other neurotransmitters,hormones,and neuropeptides,which are released in response to stressful encounters.Attention is the basis of cognitive processing;the current information processing and potential threat detection are inseparable from the role of attention.Vigilance,orientation and selection of attention were modulated by adrenaline and dopamine and other stress hormones.Previous studies on acute psychological stress and attention were mostly from the perspective of brain imaging and behavior.In the brain imaging study,some evidence suggests that stress and anxiety shift the balance of attention away from a task-directed mode,governed by prefrontal cortex,to a sensory-vigilance mode,governed by the amygdala and other threat-sensitive regions.Other evidence suggests that consistent activation of the right superior temporal gyrus during psychological stress indicate that attention is shifted towards emotion regulation and goal-directed behavior.In terms of behavioral performance,some studies have found that acute psychological stress leads to narrowing attention and enhances the ability to detect target properties.However,other studies have found that acute psychological stress reduced attention switching and accuracy of perception processing.There are many shortcomings in studying acute psychological stress.First of all,in the way to induce acute psychological stress,the previous studies mainly use public speech and verbal operation,programmed arithmetic operations and watching extremely negative film clips and so on.However,these methods have some problems,some operational processes are complex,and some do not get stable hormones response,and cannot look at time course of the attention processing of stressor itself.Therefore,a simple and effective acute psychological stressor was needed to investigate the attention processing of stressor itself.Secondly,the effect of acute psychological stress on the attention processing is still in dispute.In the past,brain imaging and behavioral studies cannot reveal the dynamic changes of the brain during the course of acute psychological stress,that is,it cannot be examined whether the stress has different effects at different stages of information processing.Therefore,the neural mechanism of acute psychological effects on attention is still unclear.Finally,an effective and fast selection of the relevant features of a scene is of utmost priority in stressful and dangerous situations.Therefore,stress may not only affect the choice of target stimulus,but also may affect the inhibition of non-target stimulus processing,but there is no study to explore the mechanism of acute psychological stress on selective attention.In view of the shortcomings of previous acute psychological stressor,the study 1 will design the mental arithmetic task as the new acute psychological stressor on the basis of previous induced way and test the effectiveness of the mental arithmetic task.In view of the effect of acute psychological stress on attention processing,two studies will be carried out: the study 2 explore the attention process of acute psychological stressor and visual probe stimulation;study 3 focused on the effect of acute psychological stress on selective attention processing.Stress can promote the rapid and effective re-allocation of physical and psychological resources in the face of urgency and danger,so as to improve the ability to adapt and survive.Investigation on the above issues can provide a scientific explanation for this adaptation process.It is of great significance for revealing brain mechanism underlying the modulation of acute psychological stress on psychological process and behavior.It has important reference value for the prevention of stress-related mental disorders and diseases.Study 1 aims to explore a simple and effective task that can be used to explore the time course of acute psychological stress.Experiment 1 design mental arithmetic task,which was embedded in social-evaluative threat and time pressure.The effectiveness of the task was assessed by collecting subjective emotional experiences and salivary cortisol induced by the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis.Experiment 2 examines the effectiveness of the task from the sympathetic adrenal medulla axis by analyzing the heart rate variability.The results found that in the subjective emotional experience,mental arithmetic task lead to increased tension,anxiety levels,and negative emotions.In the objective physical response,salivary cortisol levels increased significantly after stress,and decreased sharply after stress;the heart rate variability was significantly reduced,indicate that vagal activity was decreased.This study shows that both in the subjective emotional experience and objective physical response,the mental arithmetic task has successfully induced the psychological stress response.Study 2 is intended to explore the effect of acute psychological stress on attention processing of acute psychological stressor and probe stimuli.Experiment 3 examines the effect of acute psychological stress on attention processing of acute psychological stressor(mental arithmetic).Experiment 4 adds a probe task after the feedback of the mental arithmetic task,and explores the effect of acute psychological stress on attention processing of probe.Both of two experiments found that acute psychological stress was associated with a dissociable effect on different stages of visual information processing.First of all,whether it is on the stressor and probe,N1 component was enhanced in the anterior scalp,reflect that the individual's alertness level was higher,the sensory intake was enhanced.Second,P2 and P3 are weakened in stress conditions,may indicate that less attention resources are used for processing target stimuli.In short,acute psychological stress increases the level of early sensory input,reduces the late attention processing.In addition,Experiment 4 also found that the N2 component was enhanced under stress,reflect enhancement of cognitive control in psychological stress state,so that individuals can better control over the allocation of attention resources.When the brain gets enough information to complete the target task(estimate the result or judge the direction),the processing intensity of the stimulus itself is weakened.Study 3 aimed to explore the impact of acute psychological stress on selective attention processing when target stimulation is interfered with irrelevant information.In the Experiment 5,mental arithmetic task was used to induce acute psychological stress,and the dual-task paradigm was adopted.The flanker task was added to the mental arithmetic task to study the selective attention processing under acute psychological stress.In order to eliminate the mutual interference between the two tasks,mental arithmetic task and flanker task were completed separately in Experiment 6,and the effects of acute psychological stress on the selective attention process were examined.Two experiments both found that stress induce stronger N1,N2 and P3 activities than control block.Compared with the control block,the enhanced N1 activity under stress block may indicate an increase level of individual alertness and enhancement of sensory input under acute psychological stress.Stress block induce a stronger activity of N2 in the anterior middle scalp than the control block,which may indicate that the active attention control process is enhanced in the case of acute psychological stress.For the P3 component,the stress block induced larger P3 amplitude than the control block,reflecting more resource allocation for the target stimulus under acute psychological stress.The results of the Study 3 showed that the dissociable effect of acute psychological stress on the different stages of visual information processing disappears when there is interference in the target stimulus.Increased attention control under acute psychological stress leads to more attention resources for selective attention processing to achieve goal-oriented behavior.In sum,this study investigated the effects of acute psychological stress on the attention processing by means of innovative experimental paradigm.First,mental arithmetic task was modified and its effectiveness was verified by the response of the two axis system.Second,the mental arithmetic task was used to explore the effect of acute psychological stress on the attention processing of stressor and probe stimuli.Finally,the effects of acute psychological stress on selective attention processing were further investigated.This study found that acute psychological stress not only can enhance the general alertness and sensory input,but also can promote the attention control of the cognitive resources,making a reasonable allocation of resources according to different tasks.This study reveals the impact of acute psychological stress on the different stages of the process and its possible mechanism,which provides a basis for the different changes of cognitive function under acute psychological stress.Future research needs to combine the stress intensity and ego depletion and other factors,to further examine the impact of acute psychological stress on the attention processing.