Department of Psychology and Counselling, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia.
Holsworth Research Initiative, La Trobe University, Bendigo, VIC, Australia.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2022 Feb;84(2):383-395. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02454-x. Epub 2022 Feb 17.
Research on the relationship between chronic stress and cognition is limited by a lack of concurrent measurement of state-anxiety, physiological arousal, and gender. For the first time, we assessed the impact of these factors on top-down/conscious (simple and choice reaction time) and bottom-up/reflexive (saccadic reaction time) measures of attention using CONVIRT virtual-reality cognitive tests. Participants (N = 163) completed measures of academic stress (effort-reward imbalance; ERI) and state-anxiety while heart-rate variability was recorded continuously throughout the experiment. Gender moderated the association between academic stress with the top-down measures (b = -0.002, t = -2.023, p = .045; b = -0.063, t = -3.080, p = .002) and higher academic stress was associated with poorer/slower reaction times only for male participants. For bottom-up attention, heart rate variability moderated the relationship between academic stress and saccadic reaction time (b = 0.092, t = 1.991, p = .048), and only female participants who were more stressed (i.e., ERI ≥ 1) and displayed stronger sympathetic dominance had slower reaction times. Our findings align with emerging evidence that chronic stress is related to hyperarousal in women and cognitive decrements in men. Our findings suggest that higher ERI and sympathetic dominance during cognitive testing was associated with poorer bottom-up attention in women, whereas for men, academic stress was related with poorer top-down attention irrespective of sympathovagal balance.
慢性压力与认知之间的关系研究受到状态焦虑、生理唤醒和性别同时测量的限制。我们首次使用 CONVIRT 虚拟现实认知测试，评估了这些因素对自上而下/意识（简单和选择反应时）和自下而上/反射（眼跳反应时）注意力测量的影响。参与者（N=163）在实验过程中连续记录心率变异性的同时，完成了学业压力（努力-回报失衡；ERI）和状态焦虑的测量。性别调节了学业压力与自上而下测量之间的关联（b=-0.002，t=-2.023，p=.045；b=-0.063，t=-3.080，p=.002），对于男性参与者，较高的学业压力与较差/较慢的反应时间相关。对于自下而上的注意力，心率变异性调节了学业压力与眼跳反应时间之间的关系（b=0.092，t=1.991，p=.048），只有压力较大（即 ERI≥1）和交感神经优势较强的女性参与者反应时间较慢。我们的发现与新兴证据一致，即慢性压力与女性的过度唤醒和男性的认知能力下降有关。我们的发现表明，在认知测试期间，较高的 ERI 和交感神经优势与女性较差的自下而上注意力相关，而对于男性，无论交感神经和迷走神经平衡如何，学业压力都与较差的自上而下注意力相关。
