Mental resources shared by selective attention and psychological resilience

Ihaya, Keiko; Kawahara, Jun-ichiro · 2015 · Crossref

DOI: 10.4992/pacjpa.79.0_2ev-004

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Summary

This study investigates the relationship between psychological resilience and selective attention, specifically examining whether these constructs share underlying mental resources. Psychological resilience is defined as the capacity to recover from psychological damage, yet the specific cognitive processes driving individual differences in resilience remain unclear. The authors hypothesize that attention functions, which are linked to positive emotions and stress processing, may constitute a shared resource with resilience. Building on prior research suggesting that high resilience is associated with broader attentional scope and that stress and attention processing share mechanisms, this study tests whether selective attention capabilities differ based on resilience levels. The experimental design involved 34 Japanese adults (mean age 22.24 years) who completed a resilience questionnaire and a flanker task. Participants were categorized into high and low resilience groups based on their questionnaire scores. The flanker task manipulated perceptual load by varying the number of distractor stimuli (two for low load, five for high load) alongside target and flanker stimuli (letters Z or N). The primary metric was the interference effect, calculated as the difference in reaction times between congruent and incongruent conditions. A mixed two-way ANOVA analyzed the effects of resilience group and perceptual load on interference. The results demonstrated a significant main effect of resilience and a significant interaction between resilience and perceptual load. Specifically, under low perceptual load conditions, the high-resilience group exhibited significantly greater interference from flankers compared to the low-resilience group. However, under high perceptual load conditions, this difference disappeared, with both groups showing similar levels of interference. Additionally, the high-resilience group showed a significant main effect of perceptual load, indicating their performance changed depending on the load, whereas the low-resilience group did not show such variation. These findings suggest that individuals with high resilience possess greater attentional resources and employ flexible processing strategies. The high-resilience group’s increased interference under low load implies they process more environmental information, including distractors, which they can suppress when perceptual load increases. In contrast, the low-resilience group’s consistent performance across load conditions suggests a lack of flexible strategy adjustment and potentially fewer available attentional resources. The authors conclude that selective attention, particularly the ability to switch strategies based on perceptual load, is a key mental resource shared with psychological resilience, highlighting the need for further investigation into attention switching capabilities.

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• stress arousal performance