ArticleScientific reports2016
Acute stress selectively impairs learning to act.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Learning in a crisis moment: a randomized controlled trial in emergency bystander intervention.BMC psychology · 2023Trial
- Neural Bases of Affect-Based Impulsivity: A Decision Neuroscience Account.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Review
- Improving the Reliability of the Pavlovian Go/No-Go Task for Computational Psychiatry Research.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Childhood unpredictability and the development of exploration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Anxiety associated with perceived uncontrollable stress enhances expectations of environmental volatility and impairs reward learning.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Stress to inflammation and anhedonia: Mechanistic insights from preclinical and clinical models.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Comparison between the Effects of Acute Physical and Psychosocial Stress on Feedback-Based Learning.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Modeling Variation in Empathic Sensitivity Using Go/No-Go Social Reinforcement Learning.Affective science · 2022Article
- Search for solutions, learning, simulation, and choice processes in suicidal behavior.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · 2022Review
- Acute stress blunts prediction error signals in the dorsal striatum during reinforcement learning.Neurobiology of stress · 2021Article
- Motivational learning biases are differentially modulated by genetic determinants of striatal and prefrontal dopamine function.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2021Article
- An Integrative Framework of Appraisal and Adaptation in Serious Medical Illness.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2020Article
- Interpersonal dysfunction in borderline personality: a decision neuroscience perspective.Current opinion in psychology · 2018Review
- Early life stress, FK506 binding protein 5 gene (FKBP5) methylation, and inhibition-related prefrontal function: A prospective longitudinal study.Development and psychopathology · 2017Article
- Threat of shock and aversive inhibition: Induced anxiety modulates Pavlovian-instrumental interactions.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2017Article
- Stress and Exploitative Decision-Making.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2017Article
- Impulsivity influences betting under stress in laboratory gambling.Scientific reports · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Stress interferes with instrumental learning. However, choice is also influenced by non-instrumental factors, most strikingly by biases arising from Pavlovian associations that facilitate action in pursuit of rewards and inaction in the face of punishment. Whether stress impacts on instrumental learning via these Pavlovian associations is unknown. Here, in a task where valence (reward or punishment) and action (go or no-go) were orthogonalised, we asked whether the impact of stress on learning was action or valence specific. We exposed 60 human participants either to stress (socially-evaluated cold pressor test) or a control condition (room temperature water). We contrasted two hypotheses: that stress would lead to a non-selective increase in the expression of Pavlovian biases; or that stress, as an aversive state, might specifically impact action production due to the Pavlovian linkage between inaction and aversive states. We found support for the second of these hypotheses. Stress specifically impaired learning to produce an action, irrespective of the valence of the outcome, an effect consistent with a Pavlovian linkage between punishment and inaction. This deficit in action-learning was also reflected in pupillary responses; stressed individuals showed attenuated pupillary responses to action, hinting at a noradrenergic contribution to impaired action-learning under stress.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.