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Feel free to write this down: Writing about a stressful experience does not impair change detection task performance
Grant S Shields1, Chandler M Spahr1, Andrew P Yonelinas1
1Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
|December 15, 2018
Summary
Recalling a stressful event through writing does not impair working memory (WM) or its underlying cognitive processes, such as attention and capacity. This suggests that experiencing stress differs cognitively from recalling it later.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Stress Research
Background:
- Acute stress is known to impair working memory (WM), the ability to maintain and update information.
- However, the impact of recalling unresolved stressors on WM and its underlying cognitive mechanisms remains largely unexplored.
- Understanding these boundaries is crucial for a comprehensive view of stress and cognition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how recalling an unresolved stressful experience influences working memory performance.
- To examine the effects of recalling stressors on the cognitive processes underlying working memory, including attention, capacity, and bias.
- To compare the cognitive effects of stress recall versus acute stress exposure.
Main Methods:
- A study involving 171 participants randomly assigned to either a stressful writing condition (recalling an unresolved stressful experience) or a control condition (writing about the prior day).
- Following the writing task, participants completed a change detection task to measure working memory performance.
- Computational cognitive modeling was employed to estimate underlying processes: attention, capacity, and bias.
Main Results:
- Writing about a stressful experience did not impair performance on the change detection task compared to the control condition.
- No significant alterations were found in the estimated cognitive processes (attention, capacity, bias) between the stressful writing and control groups.
- The findings indicate that recalling a stressful episode does not produce the same cognitive effects as experiencing acute stress.
Conclusions:
- Recalling unresolved stressful experiences via writing does not negatively impact working memory performance or its core cognitive functions.
- The cognitive consequences of experiencing a stressor appear distinct from those of recalling a stressor at a later time.
- This research highlights the importance of differentiating between acute stress exposure and stress recall in cognitive research.
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