How Stress Affects Cognitive Abilities

This analysis persists of key points, about The article “Stress and the brain by Janet Elder”. The author forged an excellent informative piece to educate the reader on the effects of stress on the brain. The author states that “Stress can be both good and bad. It is part of life, and your brain and body respond to it”. The author clarifies that, "Whether stress is harmful or helpful depends on the amount of stress, how severe it is, and how long it lasts".

Cognitive strategies allow the person to decipher stress in a different way. A person can reduce the significance of the strain, or maximize the

The results of the studied showed that stress induced SP participants recalled fewer items on test 2 than non-stressed SP participants, whereas there was not a difference in the RP group. Memory impairment caused by stress only resulted in the SP group. In addition, the stressed RP participants showed the performed equally to the non-stressed RP implying that stress has no affect on memory when retrieval practice is used to learn material. The researchers also found that stress had no immediate effect on memory for either group of

The participants will be given The Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) devised by Gathercole and Pickering (2001). This test consists of four tasks which include

Stress must be present to ensure our very being. One may wonder about the validity of this statement, but it is quite true. Stress plays a vital role in the way we make decisions (Massa et al, 2002, pg 1). “Problem solving and decision making in demanding real-world situations can be susceptible to acute stress effects which manifest in a variety of ways depending on the type of decision. The negative effects of an overload of acute stress include attentional tunneling, working memory loss, and restrictions in long term memory retrieval, with simple strategies being favoured over more complicated ones. The underlying assumption is that stress can lead to errors, poor performance and bad decisions.

Chronic stress stemming from poverty can cause a setback in the working memory of young adults and decrease the ability for them to store long term information, critically think, comprehend, write and read ( Evans & Shamberg, 2009, p. 6545-6549). Working memory allows individuals to temporarily store information over a certain amount of time and then manipulate that information in order to critically think and produce more ideas and thoughts. Working memory is crucial to a child’s development because it helps them store information for the long term, practice critical thinking

Working memory refers to one’s ability to complete immediate tasks through the use of short-term memory and precision to make actively conscious choices. This is especially important in one’s organizational ability, reasoning, and decision-making. Unfortunately, working memory is yet another function of your brain that only gets weaker as you age into your midlife years. If you’ve ever placed a soup can in the wrong cabinet drawer, or put on non-matching socks or shoes, then you know exactly what it feels like.

The purpose of this article is to find out if there is any correlation or causation effect between playing competitive sports and the development of Working Memory (WM). In order to achieve the purpose of this research, researchers studied various types of students and categorized them according to the sports they play, or not play. Researchers measure the Working Memory Capacity (WMC) of subjects using a software called Automated Operation Span (AOSPAN), which has been proven to be a good measure of WMC.

The Working Memory Index measures the student’s ability to register, maintain, and manipulate visual and auditory information in conscious awareness. Working Memory assists an individual in controlling attention and resisting distractions. It is composed of the Digit Span and Picture Span subtests. On Digit Span, EE107 was asked to recall a list of in the same order, reverse order, and numerical order. Picture Span required EE107 to memorize pictures and identify them in order on a different page. Picture Span was a strength for EE107. There was a clinically significant difference between EE107’s Digit Span score (extremely low) and her Picture Span score (average). This discrepancy may indicate that EE107 can best utilize working memory in problem solving when a visual, rather than verbal, stimulus is used. Furthermore, on Digit Span, the numbers cannot be repeated; thus, the discrepancy between these scores may also indicate that the EE107 experienced a lapse in attention. On the Working Memory Index, EE107 obtained a standard score of 76, which is in

2011, pp. 28-29). The findings of the study show a strong “interaction” between stress and

For some, stress is a cognitive enhancer. Some people see a positive consequence to stress and can now more effectively focus on the task at hand. During a time of immense stress, a person could adapt to the current status of the environment. Change is always guaranteed in life, and stress causing people to be proactive at all times is the awesome, because it helps you work more efficiently which will result in so many more benefits, like having more free time. And that leads me into my next point.

To assess the memory of the two groups, we can use two tasks. The first task is working memory which includes three practices one before the scanning by one day or more, the second before the scanning and the third practice within the scanning. The

When it comes to academics, most individuals would perform with their highest abilities to master the assessments. Within this article by Gimmig, Huguet, Caverni, and Cury, an individual with a high working memory capacity are known to prosper, but add a high pressure situation into the equation and the individual will choke. The pressure leads to anxiety, which then cause the individual to choke. Choking is used to describe the huge decline in the usual performance when pressure is supplied. However, what about high WMC cause anxiety in high stake situations? Why aren’t these tasks confined only to acquire skills and knowledge? Also, how do implications for an assessment of intellectual capacities differ in different settings?

study had showed that there is significant relationship between psychosocial stress induced cortisol elevations and memory retrieval. According to this finding, high cortisol levels will have an effect for people forgetting events. When people

Previous studies (Beilock, 2008; Beilock, Kulp, Hot, & Carr, 2004; Beilock & Carr, 2005; Gimmig et al., 2006; Beilock & DeCaro, 2007) have examined ‘choking under pressure’ and concluded that it occurs for those with high working memory (HWM) capacities whereas low working memory (LWM) individuals were not affected. Although this finding has been common amongst researchers, each have examined different factors contributing towards pressure induced failure, in an attempt to explain the phenomena and most accurately coincide with real life situations.