Stress manipulation: In both Experiments 1 and 2, all groups completed a simple choice-RT task that either was accompanied by psychological stress in the form of performance feedback and noise exposure (controllable stress: CSt group and uncontrollable stress: USt group) or was not accompanied by these forms of stress (no-stress: NSt group). The manipulation consisted of a practice block that was identical across groups, followed by two testing blocks that varied between groups. Performance feedback (blocks 1 and 2): the NSt group received no performance feedback; the CSt group received accurate feedback indicating success or failure in responding fast enough to beat a time limit; the USt group received performance feedback that was unrelated to their response speed and either featured an exaggerated proportion of failure feedback (Experiment 1) or was equated on feedback with the CSt group (Experiment 2). Noise exposure (block 2): the NSt group received no noise exposure; the CSt group was able to learn that short noises were contingent on responding fast enough to beat time limits; the USt group was exposed to non-contingent noises unrelated to response speed or performance feedback, and the amount of short and long noises were equated with the CSt group.
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