Summary: People recall information better when the information is related to a stressful event, a new study reports.
Source: University of Arkansas
New findings on the effects of stress on memory suggest that people tend to recall information better when the information is related to a stressful event.
However, the factor of delay—that is, the time between a stressful event and learning information—does not appear to have as strong an influence on the relationship between stress and memory as previously thought.
“The effects of acute stress on memory encoding are complex,” said Grant Shields, lead author of a study published in Learning & Memory. “Our work shows that relevance of information to a stressor appears to play an important role in the effects of stress on encoding.”
Shields is assistant professor of psychological sciences in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the U of A. As a cognitive neuroscientist, he studies the effects of stress on cognitive processes.
Shields and co-authors Colton Hunter, doctoral student in psychological sciences at the U of A, and Andrew Yonelinas, psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, tested the recall of 130 young adults by manipulating acute stress, the delay between stress and memory encoding, and the relevance of information to the stressful event. Encoding is the initial learning of information.
The researchers divided participants into two groups. Both groups were asked to remember a list of words related to personality traits and other words not related to personality traits. Members of one group were required to give a speech on their personality to a panel of evaluators. Members of a control group also spoke on their personality, but only among themselves within a non-stressful environment.
The researchers found that stress during encoding led to greater recall of stress-relevant materials—in this case, a list of personality-related words. This was true compared to material not related to the stressor, non-personality words such as “muddy.”
This effect was slightly greater for materials encoded during the stressor, rather than those encoded after a short delay, although the stress-relevance effect was not significantly different across the delay conditions.
Attention to the effect of stress on cognition has increased over the past two years, as more people are dealing with a multitude of stressors. Research has shown that chronic or repeated exposure to stress has a negative effect on attention span, sleep and memory, and that it can even damage the brain.
About this memory and stress research news
Author: Press Office
Source: University of Arkansas
Contact: Press Office – University of Arkansas
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“Stress and memory encoding: What are the roles of the stress-encoding delay and stress relevance?” by Grant S. Shields et al. Learning & Memory
Abstract
Stress and memory encoding: What are the roles of the stress-encoding delay and stress relevance?
The effects of acute stress on memory encoding are complex.
Recent work has suggested that both the delay between stress and encoding and the relevance of the information learned to the stressor may modulate the effects of stress on memory encoding, but the relative contribution of each of these two factors is unclear.
Therefore, in the present study, we manipulated (1) acute stress, (2) the delay between stress and encoding, and (3) the relevance of the information learned to the stressor.
The results indicated that stress during encoding led to better memory for study materials that were related to the stressor relative to memory for study materials that were unrelated to the stressor.
This effect was numerically reduced for materials that were encoded 40 min after stressor onset (23 min after the stressor had ended) compared with items encoded at the time of the stressor, but this difference was not significant.
These results suggest that the relevance of the information learned to the stressor may play a particularly important role in the effects of stress on memory encoding, which has important implications for theories of stress and memory.
