Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology submitted time 2019-10-16
Abstract： Stressor presents a risk factor in everyday life by not only triggering stress responses in the body but also influencing cognitive processing. Previous research has shown that the medial frontal cortex and dorsolateral frontal cortex, on which error processing depends, are susceptible to acute stress. However, few studies have explored the effect of stress on error processing. It is still unclear whether individuals with acute stress can effectively detect their own error responses and how acute stress influences the transfer from error monitoring to post-error adjustment. To address these issues, we recruited 52 healthy male participants and randomly assigned them into stress (N = 26) or control (N = 26) groups. The participants were first asked to undergo an acute stress test or control-stress test and soon after that perform an error awareness task. Acute stress was induced by the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) which consists of a public speech task and a mental arithmetic task. The error awareness task was a motor go/no-go response inhibition task, in which the participants marked the responses where they recognized errors. Additionally, information on the participants’ heart rates, subjective emotional states, and perceived stress levels was collected to evaluate their immediate reaction to stress. Finally, we used salivary cortisol levels to explore the delayed reaction to stress during the experiment. The acute stress induction was indexed by the increases in free cortisol levels, heart rates, perceived stress levels, and negative affect in the stress group compared with the control group. Two main findings were obtained in this study. First, the accuracy of error awareness in the stress group was lower than that of the control group, and the negative affect under acute stress was negatively predictive of the accuracy of error awareness in the stress group but not the control group, suggesting that acute stress led to poor error monitoring. Second, the accuracy of the first trials after aware errors was significantly lower than that after unaware errors in the stress group, but there was no change in the control group, showing that post-error performance was impaired following acute stress. Altogether, the present study demonstrated that participants could not effectively identify error responses after acute stress, and their post-error adjustment was impaired even when the error responses were identified. Our results show that stress plays an important role in error processing, which is consistent with the biphasic-reciprocal model that proposes that stress responses enhance the activation of the amygdala but impair neural functioning in the prefrontal cortex. In conclusion, the present study demonstrates that acute stress impairs the performance monitoring system, which leads to impaired post-error adaptive behaviors. " " "
Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2018-10-26 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract：认知控制是动态的、过程性的认知调控, 涉及监测和控制两个过程。先前研究表明奖赏可以提升认知控制, 但是奖赏是通过增强信号监测来提升认知控制的, 还是作用于控制过程来提升认知控制的, 是一个有待研究的重要问题。在本研究中, 我们设计了三个实验来调查这一问题。实验一采用Stop-Signal任务验证奖赏是否能提升认知控制; 实验二通过改变反应规则将Stop-Signal任务信号监测加工分离出来, 探讨实验一中奖赏的提升作用是否来源于奖赏对信号监测的增强; 实验三通过操纵注意资源损耗分析, 考察注意资源分配对信号监测的促进作用。实验一结果显示, 个体能更快的根据奖赏信息做出抑制反应。实验二结果表明, 在信号监测任务中, 个体能更加快速的监测到与当前抑制状态相冲突且和奖赏相关的反应信号, 据此可认为奖赏通过增强对相关信号的监测, 有助于个体更早地启动奖赏刺激信号所对应的反应, 更高效地控制冲突。实验三结果说明, 当任务难度增大, 注意资源损耗, 奖赏相关信号的反应时和正确率仍优于无奖赏信号, 说明注意资源的分配可以调节相关信号的监测速度。总体来看, 本研究通过一系列实验表明, 以目标为导向的行为发生过程中, 奖赏能有效提升认知控制效率, 其关键机制在于通过注意资源分配增强相关信号的监测。
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