Effects Of Acute Stress On Attentional Bias In Threat Stimuli-An Eye Movement Study

Stress is a systemic non-specific response of an organism to real or potential threat.Attention bias refers to the difference of attention distribution between threat stimulus and neutral stimulus.Rumination is a way of thinking in which an individual repeatedly reflects on the symptoms,causes and results of negative events and emotions,and is characterized by repeated negative thinking.Previous studies have shown that the degree of attention bias can effectively predict individual cortisol response under stress.But it's not clear whether stress affects people's attentional bias toward threatening stimuli,or what constitutes it.In addition,few researchers have explored the effect of stress on attention bias in trait redundant individuals and the persistence of this effect in highly redundant individuals.Therefore,this study combined with eye movement tracking technology to explore the effect of acute stress on attention bias of threat stimuli and the persistence of this effect on trait redundancy individuals.The first study,55 males aged 18-35 years were randomly assigned to the stress group(n=29)and the control group(n=26).The effects of acute stress on attentional bias in threat stimuli were studied by manipulating the subjects' stress states and the positions of cues in eye movement tracking tasks.The study used Maastricht Acute Stress Test(MAST)to induce Stress or control status of subjects,and then asked them to complete eye movement tracking task,which can separate attention oriented acceleration in attention bias and attention dissolving difficulty.We expected that the concentration of cortisol in the stress group was higher than that in the control group,and the stress group tried to show attention directed acceleration and difficulty in attention relief for the threat stimulus.The results showed that salivary cortisol in the stress group was higher than that in the control group,indicating that stress induction was effective.Acute stress increases the difficulty in paying attention to threatening stimuli,which may be associated with the impairment of executive control of the anterior cortex by acute stress.In the second study,the persistence of the effect of acute stress on the attention bias of trait redundant individuals was studied by manipulating the stress state of the high and low redundancy subjects and the clue position in the eye movement tracking task.Before the experiment,the subjects were divided into the high and low group,the high redundancy group(n=29)and the low redundancy group(n=29)by using the redundancy response questionnaire(RRS).Maastricht Acute Stress Test(MAST)was used to induce the Stress state of the two groups of subjects,and then they were asked to complete the eye-movement tracking task and complete the eye-movement tracking task again after a two-hour rest in the laboratory.We expected that the cortisol concentration of the high trait redundancy group was higher than that of the low trait redundancy group,and that the high trait redundancy group showed attentional directional acceleration and attentional dissolving difficulty in threat stimulus.The results showed that there was no difference in cortisol between the two groups,indicating that redundancy did not affect the stress response and stress recovery of the subjects.After stress,individuals with high redundancy showed difficulty in paying attention to threat stimulus.The results of this study show that,firstly,MAST can well induce the stress state of the subjects;Second,acute stress can enhance the attention bias of the subjects to threat stimulus,which is mainly to enhance attention and remove difficulties.Third,after stress,trait redundancy can enhance individuals' attention to threat stimulus.