Acute academic stress impairs inhibitory control in early primary school children

Children at the early stage of primary school (typically aged 6-8 years) begin to encounter various stresses, including academic stress stemming from expectations and evaluations by parents, teachers, and peers. Concurrently, this age group experiences accelerated cognitive development, including the crucial capacity of inhibitory control (IC), vital for academic success. In exploring the interplay between these factors, we investigated how acute academic stress affects IC in early primary school children aged 7-8 years. Stress manipulation involved a time-constrained mathematics test with peer comparison and teacher evaluation. IC performance was assessed using the adapted Go/No-go task. Results revealed that children exposed to acute academic stress exhibited impaired IC, evidenced by a significant decrease in No-go stimulus accuracy in post-test compared to pre-test tasks. In contrast, control participants who were not subjected to stress induction but completed the same mathematical test or a simple maze test did not exhibit a similar effect. This study highlights the detrimental effects of acute academic stress on IC in young primary school children, underscoring the importance of reducing excessive academic stress to support the healthy development of children's cognitive functions.