Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, Biopsychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.
Behav Brain Res. 2013 Sep 1;252:260-5. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2013.06.013. Epub 2013 Jun 13.
Psychological stress has attracted much interest as a potential modulator of response control processes. However, especially in dual-task situations, the effect of psychological stress is less understood. In the current study we investigated these effects. "Thirty six" healthy young male participants were exposed to stress applying the socially evaluated cold pressor task (SECPT) or a control condition. Afterwards they participated in a psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm comprising two tasks (a "tone task" and a "letter task"). With the PRP task, four different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) were realized separating the tone from the letter task. The results show that stress improves task processing efficiency in dual-tasks. Stressed participants showed a reduced PRP effect (i.e., shorter response times), which was especially prominent in the short SOAs conditions (16 and 133ms). The analysis of the response times suggests that stress increases dual-tasking performance by modulating the efficiency to process the different tasks and not because 'cognitive flexibility' and switching between task components at the bottleneck is altered. Increases in processing efficiency in dual-tasks were predictable by means of individual salivary cortisol levels.
心理压力作为反应控制过程的潜在调节因素引起了广泛关注。然而，特别是在双重任务情况下，心理压力的影响还不太清楚。在当前的研究中，我们研究了这些影响。 36 名健康的年轻男性参与者接受了社会评估冷加压任务（SECPT）或对照条件下的压力暴露。之后，他们参加了一个心理不应期（PRP）范式，包括两个任务（“音调任务”和“字母任务”）。通过 PRP 任务，实现了四个不同的刺激起始间隔（SOA），将音调与字母任务分开。结果表明，压力会改善双重任务中的任务处理效率。压力大的参与者表现出 PRP 效应（即反应时间缩短），在短 SOA 条件（16 和 133ms）下尤为明显。对反应时间的分析表明，压力通过调节处理不同任务的效率来提高双重任务的表现，而不是因为“认知灵活性”和瓶颈处任务组件之间的切换发生了改变。双重任务处理效率的提高可以通过个体唾液皮质醇水平来预测。
