Original articleStress-Induced Deficits in Working Memory and Visuo-Constructive Abilities in Special Operations Soldiers
Section snippets
Subjects in the Study
A total of 184 of 200 consecutively recruited male, active duty personnel [mean age 23 years, standard deviation (SD) = 4.1] were the subjects of this study. One hundred thirty subjects (69.9%) were single, and 54 (29%) were married. Overall, 166 subjects were men; 18 were women. As designated by their military operational specialty, 92 subjects were Navy pilots, 14 subjects were Marine aviators, and 78 were air wing support personnel. Recruitment of subjects was conducted by the investigators
ROCF Copy Data
The mean ROCF Copy scores for the Pre-stress, Stress, and Post-stress groups were 35.8, 33.4, and 35.4, respectively. General linear model univariate ANOVA indicated there was a significant effect of group (F(1,2) = 52.04; p < .000). Post hoc analyses (Tukey) indicated that this effect was due to a significantly lower ROCF Copy score in the Stress group (mean difference between Stress and Pre-stress group = 2.40 [standard error (SE) = .25]; p < .001; mean difference between Stress group and
Discussion
Performance on the ROCF was within the normal range for the pre-stress and post-stress groups. However, exposure to realistic levels of acute stress resulted in significant alterations in both ROCF copy procedure and ROCF recall scores. Contrary to our hypothesis, nearly all subjects exhibited abnormalities in visuo-constructive abilities when copying the Rey figure immediately after stress exposure. The piecemeal strategy used by these adults resembles that observed in pre-pubescent children
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2023, PsychoneuroendocrinologyCitation Excerpt :After removing duplicates from the initial search, we included n = 1182 articles into a database. For a study to be analyzed, it had to fulfill several criteria: (1) the time-interval between stressor offset and working-memory task onset had to be unambiguously reported, (2) it had to have used the a variant of the TSST, MAST or (SE) CPT as stressor because both those paradigms are known to trigger a reliable hormonal stress response (Goodman et al., 2017; Schwabe et al., 2008, 2012), (3) had demonstrated a significant rise in cortisol after stressor or significantly higher cortisol levels post-stressor in the stress compared to a control group to ensure the stress manipulation had actually worked, and (4) used only an n-back or some form of span task (this includes forward- and backward-span tasks as well as letter-number-sequencing and Corsi tasks) as these more narrowly capture working memory capacity than does, for example, the math performance (e.g. Al’Absi et al., 2002; Gärtner et al., 2015) or ray-ostrich complex figures (Morgan et al., 2006). Twenty-six studies fulfilled these criteria and three additional investigations that matched our inclusion criteria were identified via a more explorative GoogleScholar™ and backwards search, resulting in a total sample of 28 studies.
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