The effects of psychological stress upon attention indicated by MFF test: an analysis based on heart rate and state anxiety

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of psychological stress upon attention as subjects performed on the MFF test. Thirty-four undergraduate students served as subjects. They participated in two experimental conditions: "stress condition" and "non-stress condition". Main sources of stress were competitive instruction and anxiety caused by unfamiliar experimental setting. Heart rate and state anxiety were measured as the indices of those stressors. Their performance on the MFF test was measured in terms of reaction time and the number of correct responses in each condition. The main results were as follows. Reaction time in stress condition was found significantly shorter than that in non-stress condition. However, there was no significant difference in the number of correct responses between these two conditions. Besides, there was no linear relationship found between either heart rate or state anxiety scores and MFF test performance. These results suggest that attention measured by MFF test differs in its reaction time, depending upon whether stressful instruction exists or not, but it holds constancy in its correct responses throughout the experiment.