NEGATIVE LIFE EVENTS, DAILY HASSLES, PERCEIVED STRESS, AND PERFORMANCE OF FOCUSED ATTENTION AND CATEGORIC SEARCH CHOICE REACTION TIME TASKS

Andrew P. Smith, PhD*

ABSTRACT

Background: There has been considerable research on the effects of stress on physiology and health. Fewer studies have examined associations between stress measures and cognitive performance. There are many different measures of stress, some investigating the occurrence of major life events, others more minor daily hassles, and some examining the extent to which demands exceed the ability to cope and lead to perceived stress. In the present study, three stress measures covering different time periods were recorded, and associations between these measures and outcomes from focused attention and categoric search tasks were examined. The effects of age were also covaried. Method: Two hundred and seventy staff or students (159 females, 113 males; mean age 35.4 years, age range 17-65 years) from Cardiff University were recruited. Two hundred and fifty had complete data and they were included in the current analyses. Prior to the laboratory session, the volunteers completed questionnaires measuring negative life events, daily hassles and perceived stress. Participants carried out two choice reaction time tasks, one involving focused attention and the other categoric search. The outcomes from these tasks were mean reaction times, lapses of attention, errors, the speed of encoding new information, response organisation, and selective attention measures. Results: Initial correlational analyses revealed no significant associations between the stress measures and the performance scores. MANOVAs showed that negative life effects and perceived stress had significant and opposite effects on the focusing of attention. High negative life events were associated with wide attention, whereas high perceived stress was associated with focused attention. Older participants performed the tasks more accurately but more slowly than younger individuals. Conclusion: Measures of stress were largely not significantly associated with the performance measures. The exceptions were negative life events, perceived stress and the focusing of attention. High perceived stress was associated with more focused attention, whereas high negative life event scores were associated with attention being set to a wide angle. Age had a significant effect on performance, and the speed-error trade-off profiles of older and younger participants were different.

Keywords: Negative life events; Daily hassles; Perceived stress; Age; Focused attention; Categoric search; Choice reaction time; Errors; Lapses of attention.