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Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress

Executive function (EF) is critical to everyday life, but it can be undermined by adverse psychological states like stress and negative affect. For example, inadequate time to perform a task is a common stressor that can disrupt EF. Although the impact of actual time pressure on EF has been establis...

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Autores principales: Sussman, Rachel F., Sekuler, Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9506568/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35985154
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103702
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author Sussman, Rachel F.
Sekuler, Robert
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Sekuler, Robert
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description Executive function (EF) is critical to everyday life, but it can be undermined by adverse psychological states like stress and negative affect. For example, inadequate time to perform a task is a common stressor that can disrupt EF. Although the impact of actual time pressure on EF has been established, little is known about how self-generated, perceived time pressure (PTP) affects EF in the absence of objective time limits. We chose Eriksen’s Flanker task as an index of cognitive inhibition, a key component of EF, and we varied the interval between successive trials, the inter-trial interval (ITI), to proxy PTP. This manipulation strongly impacted task performance: shrinking the ITI to increase PTP diminished cognitive inhibition and increased both stress and negative affect. Subsequently lengthening the ITI to decrease PTP reversed nearly all of these effects, except stress, which persisted. Multilevel linear regression modeling revealed that ITI and stress predicted inhibition, and exploratory mediation modeling suggested that stress mediates the relationship between ITI and inhibition. These findings validate perceived time pressure as an empirical stressor and demonstrate EF’s sensitivity to changes in PTP.
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spelling pubmed-95065682022-09-23 Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress Sussman, Rachel F. Sekuler, Robert Acta Psychol (Amst) Article Executive function (EF) is critical to everyday life, but it can be undermined by adverse psychological states like stress and negative affect. For example, inadequate time to perform a task is a common stressor that can disrupt EF. Although the impact of actual time pressure on EF has been established, little is known about how self-generated, perceived time pressure (PTP) affects EF in the absence of objective time limits. We chose Eriksen’s Flanker task as an index of cognitive inhibition, a key component of EF, and we varied the interval between successive trials, the inter-trial interval (ITI), to proxy PTP. This manipulation strongly impacted task performance: shrinking the ITI to increase PTP diminished cognitive inhibition and increased both stress and negative affect. Subsequently lengthening the ITI to decrease PTP reversed nearly all of these effects, except stress, which persisted. Multilevel linear regression modeling revealed that ITI and stress predicted inhibition, and exploratory mediation modeling suggested that stress mediates the relationship between ITI and inhibition. These findings validate perceived time pressure as an empirical stressor and demonstrate EF’s sensitivity to changes in PTP. 2022-09 2022-08-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9506568/ /pubmed/35985154 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103702 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle Article
Sussman, Rachel F.
Sekuler, Robert
Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress
title Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress
title_full Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress
title_fullStr Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress
title_full_unstemmed Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress
title_short Feeling rushed? Perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress
title_sort feeling rushed? perceived time pressure impacts executive function and stress
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9506568/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35985154
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103702
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