Stress and Memory 1

Question 1

Key Stress Physiologists

Answer 1

Hans Selye devised the word “stress” - Definition: Stress is the body’s reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional response.

Question 2

External and Internal Stressors

Answer 2

External stressors:
Physical conditions (e.g. pain, heat).
Stressful psychological environments (e.g. poor working conditions or abusive relationships)

Internal stressors:
Physical (infections, inflammation)
Psychological (i.e. intense worry)

Question 3

Contributing factors to stress

Answer 3

Genetic predisposition
Gender and hormones (e.g. menstrual cycle) 
Perception of the stressor
Social support 
Early life adversity

Question 4

Cortisol

Answer 4

Cortisol is a steroid hormone, or glucocorticoid, and released in response to stress.

Question 5

Flashbulb Memories

Answer 5

“Distinctly vivid, precise, concrete, long-lasting memories”
e.g. 9/11
JFK Assassination
Roger Brown and James Kulik noticed that people had particularly vivid memories of where they were when JFK was shot.

Question 6

Confidence, not consistency: Talarico & Rubin (2003)

Answer 6

4 Duke students recorded their memory of first hearing about the attacks of September 11th and of a recent everyday event.

They were tested again either 1, 6, or 32 weeks later.

Consistency, vividness and belief of accuracy in the memory were all assessed.

Question 7

Emotion & Cortisol: Kuhlmann & Wolf (2006)

Answer 7

10 Neutral, 10 Positive, 10 Negative IAPS pictures
Shown for 3 sec
Subjects given either 30mg hydrocortisone (cortisol) or placebo .
Immediate and delayed memory testing
Cortisol enhanced long term consolidation of emotional stimuli while also impairing consolidation of neutral stimuli.

Question 8

TSST: Trier Social Stress Test

Answer 8

Psychological procedure that allows experimenters to induce stress under laboratory conditions

Question 9

Negative Affect & Stress

Answer 9

Speech test (variant of TSST) administered POST encoding.
- 5 mins anticipation
- 15 mins public speaking
- Abercrombie et al., (2006): Shown positive, negative and neutral IAPS pictures.
Self-reported negative affective experience (NA) was measured at baseline and immediately after the speech stressor using the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule

Question 10

Buchanan & Lovallo, (2001)

Answer 10

Cortisol administration: 20mg, 1 hour prior to encoding.
IAPS pictures (positive, neutral negative).
Incidental memory tested one week later.
Memory assessed using free recall, cued recall (categories) and recognition.
Elevated cortisol levels during memory encoding enhanced long-term recall performance of emotionally arousing pictures (relative to neutral pictures).

Question 11

Cortisol Impairs Retrieval

Answer 11

Acute cortisol administration and/or stress can impair memory…..
Male students given either placebo or cortisol (double blind, repeated measures): Learnt 20 word pairs.
- Next day: 25 mg cortisone or placebo (memory testing)
- Cortisol induced a large decrease in rCBF in the right posterior MTL (i.e. Parahippocampal gyrus), the left visual cortex and the cerebellum.

Question 12

Autobiographic Memory

Answer 12

Lab based studies: Generalize to autographical memories?
22 male students: Placebo controlled double blind cross-over study (10mg hydorcortisone).
1 hour after administration, cortisol generated significantly fewer specific memories in the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT).

Question 13

Autographical deficits: Depression

Answer 13

• Autobiographical memory impairments are also observed in depressed and suicidal patients (Williams and Broadbent, 1986)
• Depression is often accompanied by cortisol hypersecretion (Parker et al., 2003).

Question 14

The effect on memory of acute cortisol administration and/or stress is modulated by time of day…

Answer 14

Morning: High basal cortisol concentrations,
Afternoon: Low basal cortisol concentrations
(Lupien and Lepage, 2001; Lupien et al., 2002b)