Neural and behavioral dynamics of error processing under chronic stress in healthy young adults

Abstract

Chronic stress has a negative impact on cognitive function and physical health, particularly impairing cognitive control function. This study aimed to investigate the effects of chronic stress on error processing, specifically error monitoring and post-error adjustment. We assessed 61 healthy college students (32 females, 29 males, age: 18.80 ± 0.68 years) using the Student-Life Stress Inventory (SLSI) and a four-choice Flanker task with response-stimulus intervals (RSIs) of 200 ms, 700 ms, and 1500 ms to investigate the temporal dynamics of error monitoring and characteristics of different phases of post-error processing under chronic stress. Results revealed that higher chronic stress levels were associated with smaller post-error slowing (PES) and larger post-error accuracy decrease (PEAD). Dividing participants into high-chronic stress (n = 30) and low-chronic stress (n = 31) groups, we found that the ΔPe amplitude at 200 ms RSI in the low-stress group was significantly larger than that in the high-stress group, indicating that chronic stress impairs the recognition of error responses. At 200 ms RSI, the PEAD in the high-stress group was significantly larger than in the low-stress group. This suggests that high levels of chronic stress impair early-stage post-error adjustment processing. The study highlights that chronic stress impairs error monitoring and early post-error processing, revealing features of continuous processing stages in behavioral monitoring under chronic stress.