Cognitive Response to Stress: Experimental Studies of a “Compulsion To Repeat Trauma”1

Any discussion of human response to stress must include the topic of cognitive mediation. Most investigators agree that adaptation and accommodation to stress depend on cognitive processes, but the meagerness of available methods has impeded a systematic study of cognitive hypotheses. The research scientist interested in stress response faces a series of hurdles: he must find clinically relevant hypotheses; he must operationalize these hypotheses into an acceptable experimental methodology; and he must obtain reliable results. While this three-step process is the research “ideal” in the area of response to stress, it has been difficult to accomplish.

A particular problem has been in operationalizing clinical hypotheses and choosing measures appropriate for drawing inferences about thought processes. Traditionally, in laboratory studies of stress response, physiological variables have been most easily quantified and most reliable. Psychological variables, such as those derived from conscious experience and performance levels, have seldom been successful because they do not reach statistical significance, and, if they are significant in one experiment, they are seldom replicated in a second. Yet changes in conscious experience must not be neglected if we are to develop a scientific model of cognitive mediation of stress. Physiological data can add richness and depth to cognitive theory, but they can be interpreted only in the light of psychological episodes. To study the nature of psychological stress requires reliable and valid cognitive measures.

This paper presents a theory of cognitive response to stress that is supported by cognitive data from experimental studies. The theory, derived from