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Stress impairs selective attention during complex decisions: an EEG study

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Margaux Pourady¹ (), Alexandre Pouchot^1,4, Stefania Ficarella^1,2, Andrea Desantis^1,2,3; ¹Onera - The French Aerospace Lab, ²Timone Neuroscience Institute, CNRS - Université Paris Cité, ³Integrative Neuroscience & Cognition Center, CNRS - Aix Marseille University, ⁴Isae-Supaero

Understanding how acute stress affects decision-making, particularly in high-stakes contexts such as aviation and emergency situations, remains unclear. The literature reports mixed results on how acute stress influences attentional control during decision-making. To address this issue, the present study investigates how stress modulates the processing of task-relevant information in complex decisions. Sixty participants (22 males; aged 18–40 years) underwent either a stressful or a control induction task, before performing a complex decision-making task. This simulated an aviation scenario in which participants had to decide, under time pressure, whether to land or perform a go around. Visual and auditory information were presented simultaneously, but decisions were finally always based on one modality. The relevance of auditory cues was manipulated: in some trials, they were task-irrelevant and had to be ignored, whereas in others they became task-relevant because the visual information was unreliable. Stress indicators were measured through heart rate variability and subjective stress ratings. Results showed that the stress induction was effective, as subjective stress ratings were higher in the stress group compared to controls. Preliminary behavioural analyses (N=53) showed that accuracy decreased in the stress group compared to the control, but only when auditory information was relevant to the decision. This result suggests that stress impairs selective attention during decision-making, leading participants to rely more heavily on visual information, even when it was unreliable, and to ignore task-relevant auditory cues. Ongoing EEG analyses and mixed-model approaches will further characterize how acute stress alters attentional control during complex decision-making.

Topic Area: THINKING: Decision making