A FORMAL ANALYSIS OF STRESSOR AND STRESS-PRONENESS EFFECTS OF SIMPLE INFORMATION-PROCESSING

This study examined visual information processing under a stressor of recurring loud sound among groups divided according to psychometricall y identified stress susceptibility. Formal models of task performance were employed to address several issues concerning stress effects on c ognitive functioning. Examined were effects on parallel versus serial processing structure, task-wise processing capacity, strategies of all ocating processing resources to task components, and curtailment of pr ocessing of relevant task elements. Contrary to prediction, stressor p resence generated slightly more rather than less evidence of a paralle l versus serial processing structure. There was some suggestion of cen tral-task capacity depletion among more susceptible subjects, in line with certain theoretical positions. Evidence of curtailed exhaustive p rocessing of relevant stimulus items was negative. Most notable was th e disruption by stress among susceptible subjects of performance-enhan cing strategies of deploying processing resources across the different task components (elements of the visual display and within-trial stag es of processing). Such effects have received relatively little attent ion in this research domain; their investigation is shown to be made t ractable, however, through the application of selected formal models o f information processing.