The following literature review addresses the effects of various stressors on cognition. While attempting to be as inclusive as possible, the review focuses its examination on the relationships between cognitive appraisal, attention, memory, and stress as they relate to information processing and human performance. The review begins with an overview of constructs and theoretical perspectives followed by an examination of effects across attention, memory, perceptual-motor functions, judgment and decision making, putative stressors such as workload, thermals, noise, and fatigue and closes with a discussion of moderating variables and related topics. In summation of the review, a conceptual framework for cognitive process under stress has been assembled. As one might imagine, the research literature that addresses stress, theories governing its effects on human performance, and experimental evidence that supports these notions is large and diverse. In attempting to organize and synthesize this body of work, I was guided by several earlier efforts (Bourne & Yaroush, 2003; Driskell, Mullen, Johnson, Hughes, & Batchelor, 1992; Driskell & Salas, 1996; Haridcock & Desmond, 2001; Stokes & Kite, 1994). These authors should be credited with accomplishing the monumental task of providing focused reviews in this area and their collective efforts laid the foundation for this present review. Similarly, the format of this review has been designed in accordance with these previous exemplars. However, each of these previous efforts either simply reported general findings, without sufficient experimental illustration, or narrowed their scope of investigation to the extent that the breadth of such findings remained hidden from the reader. Moreover, none of these examinations yielded an architecture that adequately describes or explains the inter-relations between information processing elements under stress conditions.

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Stress, Cognition, and Human Performance: A Literature Review and Conceptual Framework

FOR MORE than a decade now, the topic of trust has been at the center of scholarly research on organizations. The ascension of trust as a major focus of research in the organizational sciences reflects in no small measure a large body of evidence documenting the substantial and varied benefits that accrue when trust is in place within organizational boundaries. Coupled with this strong evidence of the benefits of trust is an acute appreciation of the problematic nature of organizational trust. Although trust may be a desirable resource, it is often a fragile and elusive one. Interest in trust as an important dimension of organizational functioning was initially stimulated by a number of influential works on social trust, including most notably Robert Putnam’s (1993) provocative findings implicating trust as a critical factor in explaining the origins of civic engagement and the development of democratic regimes in Italian communities. Putnam’s argument attracted wide attention and was followed up by Francis Fukuyama’s (1995) comparative survey of evidence that trust plays a critical role in societal functioning. In the years following these initial landmark volumes, a number of additional works (for example, Cook 2001; Hardin 2002; Putnam 2000; Sztompka 1999) have added to the stock of studies of trust in the social sciences. Viewed in the aggregate, these contributions converge on the conclusion that trust often constitutes an important resource within social systems.

Trust and Distrust In Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches

Fatigue can have a major impact on an individual's performance and well-being, yet is poorly understood, even within the scientific community. There is no developed theory of its origins or functions, and different types of fatigue (mental, physical, sleepiness) are routinely confused. The widespread interpretation of fatigue as a negative consequence of work may be true only for externally imposed goals; meaningful or self-initiated work is rarely tiring and often invigorating. In the first book dedicated to the systematic treatment of fatigue for over sixty years, Robert Hockey examines its many aspects - social history, neuroscience, energetics, exercise physiology, sleep and clinical implications - and develops a new motivational control theory, in which fatigue is treated as an emotion having a fundamental adaptive role in the management of goals. He then uses this new perspective to explore the role of fatigue in relation to individual motivation, working life and well-being.

David C. Glass

Papers

Reappraisal of the Relationship Between Noise and Human Performance by Means of a Subsidiary Task Measure.