A Limited Capacity Information Processing Interpretation of Conditioned Emotional Responding

This investigation assessed the usefulness of a limited capacity information processing model for evaluation of stress. The assumption is that the task of anticipating an impending aversive event requires a portion of the limited capacity. Thus, such stress can be measured by a performance decrement in a concurrent task. Stress was manipulated in 14 male and female college students by means of a conditioned emotional response (CER) technique. Two tasks, motor tracking and counting backwards, were systematically studied as both primary and secondary tasks, depending on the presence or absence of reinforcement. The cognitive task of counting backwards was more sensitive to the processing demands imposed by stress than the motor task of tracking.