Title

Cognitive Change In Special Forces Personnel Following Stressful Survival Training

Abstract

Understanding the deterioration in cognitive functioning produced by stress continues to gain in importance due to the increasing demands imposed by technologically sophisticated systems. Although the general deleterious effects of stress are well established, the relative sensitivity of different cognitive functions to stress and the pattern of cognitive recovery with rest have not been fully distinguished. In this paper, we examined the cognitive performance of Special Forces soldiers immediately prior to and immediately following one week of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) School training at Ft. Bragg, NC Post-stress cognitive performance was characterized by significantly increased response time with minimal change in response accuracy. While response time increased for all tasks, memory appears to be most sensitive to stress. Performance returned to pre-stress levels the next morning following one night of sleep. The tasks affected most in the current study differed from changes which follow primarily upon physical stress, implying that the effects of combined psychological and physical stress on cognitive performance differ substantively from the effects of physical demand alone.

Publication Date

1-1-2005

Publication Title

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

Number of Pages

1776-1779

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120504901905

Socpus ID

44349108885 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/44349108885

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