Selective effects of psychosocial stress on plan based movement selection

Efficient movement selection is crucial in everyday activities. Whether this function is governed by our stress system is so far unknown. In the current study, data from thirty-six young male adults were analyzed. They performed rule- and plan-based movement selection tasks before (session 1) and after (session 2) a psychosocial stressor, or after a control condition without additional social stressor. Results showed that the rule-based efficiency advantage which was observed prior to the psychosocial stressor was significantly reduced afterwards in the whole sample, as well as in the stress group. Regression analyses revealed that this effect was due to a modulation of the plan-based approach. Especially variations—both increase and decrease—in the parasympathetic activity (reflected by the heart rate variability measure RMSSD) appeared to be disadvantageous for plan-based movement selection improvement. In contrast, performance in the rule-based movement selection tasks appeared to be rather invariant to external influences. The current results suggest that autonomic nervous system activity might modulate motor-cognitive performance. This modulatory capability might be selective for plan-based approaches, hence the applied strategy to movement selection could be decisive when it comes to the vulnerability of motor-cognitive processes towards psychosocial stress.