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Acute stress - but not aversive scene content - impairs spatial configuration learning
Thomas Meyer1,2,3, Conny W E M Quaedflieg1, James A Bisby4
1Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Cognition & Emotion
|April 17, 2019
Summary
Acute stress impairs spatial learning, even in negative environments. This suggests stress disrupts contextual cueing, impacting how we learn and adapt to our surroundings, with implications for stress-related disorders.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Stress research
Background:
- Contextual learning is crucial for adapting to stressful events.
- Spatial context memory is often studied using the contextual cueing paradigm.
- Previous research shows mixed effects of adversity on contextual cueing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To systematically investigate how stress and negative emotional content affect spatial configuration learning.
- To examine the impact of acute stress on contextual cueing within complex visual scenes.
- To explore the relationship between stress, scene valence, and spatial learning.
Main Methods:
- Developed a contextual cueing task using complex, emotionally neutral or negative visual scenes.
- Administered the Maastricht Acute Stress Test (MAST) or a control condition prior to the task (Study 2).
- Assessed spatial configuration learning and endogenous cortisol reactivity.
Main Results:
- A robust contextual cueing effect was observed, consistent across negative and neutral scenes (Study 1).
- Acute stress significantly disrupted spatial configuration learning, regardless of scene emotional content (Study 2).
- Cortisol reactivity did not mediate the effect of stress on spatial learning.
Conclusions:
- Spatial configuration learning is not significantly affected by negative scene valence alone.
- Acute stress demonstrably impairs spatial configuration learning.
- Stress-induced disruption of spatial learning may be linked to proximity to a stressor and has implications for stress-related psychopathology.
