Healthy Young Adults
Conditions
Keywords
Decision-making, Stress
Brief summary
The goal of this study is to learn how acute psychosocial stress influences decision-making in healthy young adults. It will also examine whether cortisol reactivity, a biological stress response, changes the influence of physiological emotional signals on decision-making (i.e., the gut feeling indicating risks). The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. Does exposure to an acute psychosocial stressor affect the development of physiological emotional signals during decision-making? 2. Does cortisol reactivity moderate the relationship between physiological emotional signals and decision-making? 3. Are there sex differences in these relationships? Researchers will compare participants exposed to a standardized psychosocial stress procedure, with participants exposed to a non-stressful control condition. Participants will: 1. Be randomly assigned to either a psychosocial stress condition or a control condition. 2. Complete a gambling decision-making task following the experimental manipulation. 3. Provide multiple saliva samples and subjective stress ratings throughout the session to assess stress reactivity. 4. Undergo continuous electrodermal activity recording during the decision-making task to measure physiological emotional signals.
Interventions
OTHERTrier Social Stress Test
Participants completed a slightly modified version of the Trier Social Stress Task (TSST), a validated psychosocial stress induction protocol. The protocol involved a 10-minute anticipation period followed by a 10-minute test phase: a 5-minute mock job interview and a 5-minute surprise mental arithmetic task. During the test phase, participants stood in front of a one-way mirror ("Panel-out" version) and were told they were being observed by behavioral analysts and recorded via camera, although no recording took place and the analysts were lab confederates.
Sponsors
Marie-France Marin
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
OTHER
Masking
SINGLE (Subject)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 35 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Adult aged 18-35 years old.
Exclusion criteria
* Current or past psychiatric/neurodevelopmental disorders * Physical illness * Medication use (except hormonal contraception) * Alcohol consumption exceeding Health Canada guidelines (\>10 drinks/week for women, \>15 for men) * Smoking more than 7 cigarettes/day.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Decision-making as assessed by the Iowa Gambling Task (probability of drawing from the risky decks vs safe decks) | Immediately after completing the experimental condition (Stress or control condition) | Decision-making was assessed using the Iowa Gambling Task. In this task, participants need to draw 100 cards among 4 decks offering different win-loss contingencies. Some card decks are risky (large gains and losses), whereas some are safe (small gains and losses). The dependent variable was a binary variable indicating whether the participant drew a card from the risky (coded as 1) or the safe decks (coded as 0). |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Difference in cortisol levels between the two conditions. | Baseline (just before the experimental condition is conducted), 10, 20, 50, 60, 70 minutes after the beginning of the experimental condition. | Cortisol (ug/dL) was quantified for six saliva samples in each condition (Stress or control). |
Countries
Canada
Outcome results
None listed