Herten Nadja, Otto Tobias, Wolf Oliver T
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, D-44780 Bochum, Germany; International Graduate School of Neuroscience (IGSN), Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, D-44780 Bochum, Germany.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2017 Apr;140:134-144. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2017.02.016. Epub 2017 Mar 3.
In a stressful situation, attention is shifted to potentially relevant stimuli. Recent studies from our laboratory revealed that participants stressed perform superior in a recognition task involving objects of the stressful episode. In order to characterize the role of a stress induced alteration in visual exploration, the present study investigated whether participants experiencing a laboratory social stress situation differ in their fixation from participants of a control group. Further, we aimed at shedding light on the relation of fixation behaviour with obtained memory measures. We randomly assigned 32 male and 31 female participants to a control or a stress condition consisting of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), a public speaking paradigm causing social evaluative threat. In an established 'friendly' control condition (f-TSST) participants talk to a friendly committee. During both conditions, the committee members used ten office items (central objects) while another ten objects were present without being used (peripheral objects). Participants wore eye tracking glasses recording their fixations. On the next day, participants performed free recall and recognition tasks involving the objects present the day before. Stressed participants showed enhanced memory for central objects, accompanied by longer fixation times and larger fixation amounts on these objects. Contrasting this, fixation towards the committee faces showed the reversed pattern; here, control participants exhibited longer fixations. Fixation indices and memory measures were, however, not correlated with each other. Psychosocial stress is associated with altered fixation behaviour. Longer fixation on objects related to the stressful situation may reflect enhanced encoding, whereas diminished face fixation suggests gaze avoidance of aversive, socially threatening stimuli. Modified visual exploration should be considered in future stress research, in particular when focussing on memory for a stressful episode.
在压力情境下，注意力会转向潜在相关的刺激。我们实验室最近的研究表明，处于压力下的参与者在涉及压力事件中物体的识别任务中表现更优。为了描述压力诱导的视觉探索改变所起的作用，本研究调查了经历实验室社会压力情境的参与者与对照组参与者在注视方面是否存在差异。此外，我们旨在阐明注视行为与所获得的记忆测量指标之间的关系。我们将32名男性和31名女性参与者随机分配到对照组或压力组，压力组采用特里尔社会压力测试（TSST），这是一种会引发社会评价威胁的公开演讲范式。在既定的“友好”对照条件（f - TSST）下，参与者与一个友好的委员会交谈。在两种条件下，委员会成员使用了十件办公物品（中心物体），同时还有另外十件物品虽存在但未被使用（周边物体）。参与者佩戴眼动追踪眼镜记录他们的注视情况。第二天，参与者进行了涉及前一天出现的物体的自由回忆和识别任务。处于压力下的参与者对中心物体的记忆增强，同时对这些物体的注视时间更长、注视量更大。与此形成对比的是，对委员会成员面部的注视呈现出相反的模式；在这里，对照组参与者的注视时间更长。然而，注视指标和记忆测量指标之间并不相互关联。心理社会压力与注视行为的改变有关。对与压力情境相关物体的更长时间注视可能反映了编码增强，而对面部注视的减少表明避免注视厌恶的、具有社会威胁性的刺激。在未来的压力研究中，尤其是在关注对压力事件的记忆时，应考虑到视觉探索的改变。
