The effect of auditory stressors on cognitive flexibility.
Stress is known to activate the noradrenergic system which may have a modulatory influence on cognitive flexibility. We investigated whether an auditory stressor would thus affect performance on cognitive flexibility. A task utilizing cognitive flexibility and two memory tasks were presented in both stressful and non-stressful condition. In the stressful condition performance was impaired for the cognitive flexibility task but not for the memory tasks, arguing against the stressor serving as a general distracter. These findings suggest that stress caused by an auditory stressor may negatively impact performance on more complex tasks requiring a rapid search of the semantic and lexical associative networks.
Hillier
Ashleigh
A
The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. hillier.9@osu.edu
Alexander
Jessica K
JK
Beversdorf
David Q
DQ
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000009:adverse effects; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*