Abstract
Stroop interference can be reduced by stress, and this has been taken as evidence that stress decreases the attention paid to irrelevant information, a theory known as ‘Easterbrook’s hypothesis’. This contradicts more recent theories, which state that attentional control deteriorates in stress. Fifty-five participants undertook a Stroop task under high stress (loud white noise) and low stress conditions. Attention to the irrelevant word information was assessed by manipulating the proportion of congruent trials (e.g. the word RED in the colour red); it is known that Stroop interference increases when many such trials are presented. This effect was reduced when participants were stressed, which is evidence that stress does indeed reduce attention to irrelevant information. This pattern of results was not present in participants with low working memory spans, presumably because these participants had less attentional control. These findings highlight an important weakness in contemporary theories of cognition in stress.
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Notes
The Stroop data were re-analysed with the upper and lower tertiles as the WM groups. The same pattern of results were found as reported in Fig. 1. Furthermore, when Proportion-Congruent effects were calculated by subtracting 0% condition interference scores from 50% condition interference scores, it was found that Proportion-Congruent effects in the 84 dBC condition tended to correlate negatively with Ospan score (r(53) = −0.224, p = 0.099); Proportion-Congruent effects in the 65 dBC condition did not correlate with Ospan scores (r(53) = 0.123, p = 0.26). These findings support our conclusions from our median split analyses.
Although this tendency did not approach significance for RT interference, t(52) = 0.70, p = 0.49, or accuracy interference, t(52) = 1.30, p = 0.20.
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This research was carried out while Rob Booth was a doctoral student at the University of Kent, supervised by Dinkar Sharma.
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Booth, R., Sharma, D. Stress reduces attention to irrelevant information: Evidence from the Stroop task. Motiv Emot 33, 412–418 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-009-9141-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-009-9141-5