Does anticipating a stressful speech improve memory for unrelated neutral information?

Details

Stress during a working week is typical for most of the population, but the effects of acute stress on individuals—particularly memory ability—are less clear. Prior research suggests that acute psychological stress can enhance memory through increased neuroplasticity following stress and through stress hormones directing attention toward information that matches the stressful environment. This study instead investigated how stress affects free recall when the information is unrelated to the stressor.

In a within-participant experiment, 44 Psychology undergraduates experienced both a stress condition and a control condition, one week apart, while remembering neutral stimuli unrelated to the stressor. The stress condition used the Modified Trier Social Stress Test, involving a free speech on Social Psychology; the control condition used a Spot the difference task.

The anticipatory exposure involved telling participants that they would have to complete a stressful or non-stressful task. After this exposure, they were asked to remember stimuli shown in a PowerPoint Presentation. Memory was then assessed by free recall of correct items. Only afterward did participants complete the stressful or non-stressful task and rate its stressfulness using a Likert judgement.

Stress did not significantly enhance free recall of the unrelated stimuli, even though participants reported the stress condition as significantly more stressful than the non-stress condition. The abstract notes discussion of implications for future research on stress-related memory improvement and familiarity with the stressor.