title: Context-dependent enhancement of declarative memory performance following acute psychosocial stress.
abstract: Studies on how acute stress affects learning and memory have yielded inconsistent findings, with some studies reporting enhancing effects while others report impairing effects. Recently, Joëls et al. [Joëls, M., Pu, Z., Wiegert, O., Oitzl, M.S., Krugers, H.J., 2006. Learning under stress: how does it work? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 152-158] argued that stress will enhance memory only when the memory acquisition phase and stressor share the same spatiotemporal context (i.e., context-congruency). The current study tested this hypothesis by looking at whether context-congruent stress enhances declarative memory performance. Undergraduates were assigned to a personality stress group (n=16), a memory stress group (n=18), or a no-stress control group (n=18). While being exposed to the acute stressor or a control task, participants encoded personality- and memory-related words and were tested for free recall 24h later. Relative to controls, stress significantly enhanced recall of context-congruent words, but only for personality words. This suggests that acute stress may strengthen the consolidation of memory material when the stressor matches the to-be-remembered information in place and time.
authors: Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, The Netherlands. tom.smeets@psychology.unimaas.nl
authors: T
authors: T
authors: Smeets
authors: T
authors: T
authors: Giesbrecht
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Jelicic
authors: H
authors: H
authors: Merckelbach
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D006854:Hydrocortisone / Q000097:blood; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010551:Personality; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D006854:Hydrocortisone