Impact of acute stress on attentional orienting to social cues in special operations personnel

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to characterize the effects of an acutely stressful situation on attentional orienting to social cues. Participants were tested before and during a highly stressful military training course. During the task, participants shown faces at fixation that concurrently displayed dynamic gaze shifts and expression changes from neutral to fearful or happy emotions. Military-relevant targets subsequently appeared in the periphery and were spatially congruent or incongruent with the gaze direction. Participants showed faster responses during fearful face trials during the high stress condition compared to baseline, while the response on happy face trials did not change. Additionally, enhanced performance was related to self-report reappraisal use during emotion regulation at baseline. Reaction times to threatening targets were faster on validly cued trials during both tests. Trials with safe targets showed no differences at baseline. These results suggest that acute stress plays a role in how individuals respond in the presence of a fearful cue, and during the evaluation of potentially threatening targets.