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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Assessment of Stress Effects on Cognitive Flexibility using an Operant Strategy Shifting Paradigm
Published on: May 4, 2020
The effect of auditory stressors on cognitive flexibility
Ashleigh Hillier1, Jessica K Alexander, David Q Beversdorf
1The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. hillier.9@osu.edu
Abstract:
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.
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