Date of Award

Summer 8-1-2001

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

What happens to people's ability to process infixmalion when they arc experiencing stress? Both professionally and personally, we must rely on our nbility to critically evaluate information successfully. lf we do not detect inconsistencies, it may lead to the unintended acceptance of incorrect arguments and assumptions. Tile purpose of this study was to explore how stress innucnces people's ability to comprehend nnd detect contradictions. Stress was manipulated in terms oft imc pressure. Two hundred a11d twenty-one undergraduates enrolled in psychology classes at Indiana Stale U11ivcrsity participated in the study. One group was given only 60% of the average time necessary to complete the task, whereas a second group was given 80% of the average time necessary. There were two control groups; both received sufficient time to complete the task but one was told there was not enough time to properly complete the task. Evaluating understanding of information presented in two factual stories assessed comprehension. Information described in these stories was either internally consistent or contained contradictions. A true, false, indeterminate questionnaire was used as a recognition measure of participants' memory of the story. A mixed 4 (time pressure) x 2 (consistency) x 2 (story) design was used with recognition and contradiction detection as dependent variables. Results indicated that time pressure and consistency both individually affected cognitive performance but these relationships were modified by subject variables assessing pre-existing stress, depression, and intelligence. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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