Department of Cognitive Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitaetsstrasse 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2010 Feb;93(2):183-8. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2009.09.009. Epub 2009 Sep 29.
Converging lines of evidence indicate that stress either before or after learning influences memory. Surprisingly little is known about how memory is affected when people learn while they are stressed. Here, we examined the impact of learning under stress in 48 healthy young men and women. Participants were exposed to stress (socially evaluated cold pressor test) or a control condition while they learned emotional words and neutral words that were either conceptually associated with or unrelated to the stressor. Memory was assessed in free recall and recognition tests 24h after learning. Learning under stress reduced both free recall and recognition performance, irrespective of the emotionality and the stress context relatedness of the words. While the effect of stress was comparable in men and women, women outperformed men in the free recall test. These findings show a memory impairing effect of learning under stress in humans and challenge some assumptions of current theories about the impact of stress around the time of learning on memory formation.
越来越多的证据表明，无论是在学习之前还是之后，压力都会影响记忆。令人惊讶的是，人们在学习时承受压力，记忆力会受到怎样的影响，这方面的了解却很少。在这里，我们研究了 48 名健康的年轻男性和女性在压力下学习的影响。参与者在学习时会暴露于压力（社会评价性冷水加压试验）或控制条件下，同时学习与压力源概念上相关或不相关的情绪词和中性词。学习 24 小时后，通过自由回忆和识别测试来评估记忆。无论单词的情绪性和与压力相关的程度如何，在压力下学习都会降低自由回忆和识别的表现。虽然压力的影响在男性和女性中是相当的，但女性在自由回忆测试中的表现优于男性。这些发现表明，人类在压力下学习会对记忆产生损害作用，这对当前关于学习时压力对记忆形成的影响的一些理论假设提出了挑战。
