Département de Psychologie, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada.
Psychol Rep. 2022 Aug;125(4):1988-2008. doi: 10.1177/00332941211014150. Epub 2021 May 8.
Studies have identified deleterious effects of stress on multiple cognitive processes such as memory and attention. Little is known about the impact of stress on interpretation. We investigated how an induced acute stress and more long-term stress related to life events were associated with interpretations of ambiguous stimuli. Fifty participants answered a questionnaire indexing the number of stressful life events. A median split was used to compare those reporting few or more events. Half of participants performed an arithmetic task that induced acute stress; they were compared to a control group performing a less stressful task. We measured the interpretation of ambiguous visual stimuli, which participants had to judge as "negative" or "positive". We found a significant interaction between the number of stressful life events and the induced acute stress on the proportion of positive interpretations. In the control group, participants reporting more stressful events produced less positive interpretations than those reporting few events. In the induced stress condition, no significant difference was found. Life events tend to influence interpretation in the absence of an acute stressor, which seems to be more influent in the short term.
研究已经确定了压力对多种认知过程（如记忆和注意力）的有害影响。然而，对于压力对解释的影响知之甚少。我们研究了急性压力和与生活事件相关的长期压力如何影响对模糊刺激的解释。五十名参与者回答了一份问卷，该问卷记录了生活中压力事件的数量。中位数分割被用来比较报告压力事件少或多的参与者。一半的参与者完成了一项会引起急性压力的算术任务；他们与执行一项压力较小任务的对照组进行了比较。我们测量了对模糊视觉刺激的解释，参与者必须将其判断为“消极”或“积极”。我们发现，生活中压力事件的数量与引起的急性压力之间存在显著的相互作用，这种相互作用会影响积极解释的比例。在对照组中，报告压力事件较多的参与者产生的积极解释比报告压力事件较少的参与者少。在引起压力的情况下，没有发现显著差异。生活事件往往会在没有急性压力源的情况下影响解释，而急性压力源在短期内似乎更有影响力。
