Abstract
Modulation of frontal lobes activity is believed to be an important pathway trough which the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis stress response impacts cognitive and emotional functioning. Here, we investigate the effects of stress on metacognition, which is the ability to monitor and control one's own cognition. As the frontal lobes have been shown to play a critical role in metacognition, we predicted that under activation of the HPA axis, participants should be less accurate in the assessment of their own performances in a perceptual decision task, irrespective of the effect of stress on the first order perceptual decision itself. To test this prediction, we constituted three groups of high, medium and low stress responders based on cortisol concentration in saliva in response to a standardized psycho-social stress challenge (the Trier Social Stress Test). We then assessed the accuracy of participants' confidence judgments in a visual discrimination task. As predicted, we found that high biological reactivity to stress correlates with lower sensitivity in metacognition. In sum, participants under stress know less when they know and when they do not know.
Highlights
Acute stress is associated with altered cognitive functioning, in particular with respect to decision making [1,2]
We focus on the impact of stress on the sensitivity of confidence judgments, termed metacognitive accuracy
The experimental context reactivated the stress responses specific to each three groups: Heart rate variability (HRV) was higher during the first half of the experiment for high reactivity participants (7.31 beats/min) than low and medium reactivity participants (6.2 beats/min; F(1,25) = 5.78, p < .05, η2p = .19). This difference vanished when we took into account the second half of the experiment, but we found a peak of hear rate variability (HRV) at the time of the interpersonal stressor, only for the high reactivity group (S1 Fig)
Summary
Acute stress is associated with altered cognitive functioning, in particular with respect to decision making [1,2]. Individuals exhibit less flexible cognitive processing [3] together with altered risk and feedback processing [4,5]. These effects suggest that stress taxes executive functions [2,6], and they point to the potential impact of stress on the regulation and monitoring of decision processes. We focus on the impact of stress on the sensitivity of confidence judgments, termed metacognitive accuracy
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