Subjective Stress, Salivary Cortisol, and Electrophysiological Responses to Psychological Stress

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the subjective stress, salivary cortisol, and electrophysiological responses to psychological stress induced by a modified version of a mental arithmetic task. Fifteen participants were asked to estimate whether the multiplication product of two-decimal numbers was above 10 or not either with a time limit (the stress condition) or without a time limit (the control condition). The results showed that participants reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and negative affect in the stress condition than they did in the control condition. Moreover, the salivary cortisol level continued to increase after the stress condition but exhibited a sharp decrease after the control condition. In addition, the electrophysiological data showed that the amplitude of the frontal-central N1 component was larger for the stress condition than it was for the control condition, while the amplitude of the frontal-central P2 component was larger for the control condition than it was for the stress condition. Our study suggests that the psychological stress characteristics of time pressure and social-evaluative threat caused dissociable effects on perception and on the subsequent attentional resource allocation of visual information.

Acute psychological stress promotes general alertness and attentional control processes: An ERP study

“…A consecutive task was employed in this study using an arrow‐based version of the Eriksen flanker task preceded by a mental arithmetic task (Figure ). For the mental arithmetic task (Qi et al, , ), a set of multiplication terms containing 240 arithmetic expressions (e.g., 2.51 × 4.07) were adopted. Participants were asked to estimate whether multiplying the two 2‐decimal numbers would result in a product that was above 10 or not within a time limit by pressing the “f” or “j” key.…”

“…This present study aimed to investigate the effect of acute psychological stress on selective attention. Previous studies focused on effect of moderate stress on attention processing (Qi, Gao, Guan, Liu, & Yang, ; Qi et al, ), a moderate stressor was also adopted in this study to enable comparison with results from previous studies in the field. The mental arithmetic task was employed to induce acute psychological stress as it has been shown to successfully evoke subjective stress responses, such as increased self‐reported stress level (Qi, Gao, & Liu, ; Qi et al, ), and physiological stress response, such as increased salivary cortisol level (Qi et al, ).…”

“…Previous studies focused on effect of moderate stress on attention processing (Qi, Gao, Guan, Liu, & Yang, ; Qi et al, ), a moderate stressor was also adopted in this study to enable comparison with results from previous studies in the field. The mental arithmetic task was employed to induce acute psychological stress as it has been shown to successfully evoke subjective stress responses, such as increased self‐reported stress level (Qi, Gao, & Liu, ; Qi et al, ), and physiological stress response, such as increased salivary cortisol level (Qi et al, ). In previous studies, elevated levels of state anxiety (Scholz et al, ; Wintermann, Kirschbaum, & Petrowski, ) and negative affects (Kogler et al, ; Qi et al, ; Rosenbaum et al, ) were measured as indicators of psychological stress reaction.…”

“…The mental arithmetic task was employed to induce acute psychological stress as it has been shown to successfully evoke subjective stress responses, such as increased self‐reported stress level (Qi, Gao, & Liu, ; Qi et al, ), and physiological stress response, such as increased salivary cortisol level (Qi et al, ). In previous studies, elevated levels of state anxiety (Scholz et al, ; Wintermann, Kirschbaum, & Petrowski, ) and negative affects (Kogler et al, ; Qi et al, ; Rosenbaum et al, ) were measured as indicators of psychological stress reaction. Therefore, in this study, emotion states and anxiety levels were collected after the mental arithmetic task to assess the extent of the stressor‐induced subjective response.…”

A cognitive stressor for event-related potential studies: the Portland arithmetic stress task

“…The experiment was designed to assess changes in brain activity following transient stressful events, which we measured using feedback-related negativity (FRN) in the context of correct versus incorrect performance feedback. Previous studies have utilized ERP measures to quantify stress response (Qi, Gao, Guan, Liu, & Yang, 2016; Yang, Qi, Guan, Hou, & Yang, 2012), but that research has focused on examining electrophysiological differences between sustained stressful and nonstressful states, rather than reactivity to single stressful events (e.g. negatively administered error feedback).…”