Levels of Impulsivity and Stress on Accuracy Scores and Metacognition

Amanda Buck

St. Bonaventure University

1) quite an improvement over 1^st draft

2) you still could shave some of the introductions articles since they are irrelevant

3) I made a few grammar and script changes

4) Look forward to figures (will have to have for presentation)

Abstract

This study assessed the difference between how individuals with two different types of impulsivity react to stress and how their metacognitive abilities differ as well as how they interact.. Accuracy scores of the arithmetic task in the stressful condition and the non-stressful condition, and perceived scores were recorded and analyzed. The results showed main effects for level of impulsivity and stress level(describe) , and no interaction. Other tests were implemented to evaluate the characteristic of impulsiveness, and stress levels. The present study demonstrated that in a stressful situation, functional impulsives had higher accuracy scores on the math tasks as well as accurate perceived scores. Dysfunctional impulsives had deficits in accuracy when in the stressful condition and less accurate in predicting perceived scores. You do have enough words left to state whether your findings are in agreement with previous research Fungus and Fungus (1906).

Levels of Impulsivity and Stress on Accuracy Scores and Metacognition

Impulsivity is “the tendency to deliberate less than most people of equal ability before taking action” (Dickman, 1990). Impulsiveness is often seen as a negative personality trait. As described by one researcher, impulsive individuals have a small attention span that causes them to be counterproductive. (Caplan & Shechter, 1990). However, the consequences that follow impulsive acts are not always negative. In fact, research shows that when given a simple task, an individual who is high in impulsivity has speedy response time and has little errors. Therefore, accuracy scores are unaffected (Dickman, 1990). +

Impulsivity has been primarily assessed in terms of extraversion. Impulsivity is the trait of extraversion that directly affects the most basic memory and perceptual processes and the way in which they are carried out (Dickman, 1990). When arousal or stress is increased extraverts tend to show higher levels of performance (Corr & Kumari, 1998). Extraverts also have faster response times for motor behaviors which puts them at an advantage under pressure (Doucet & Stelmack, 2000). Research has begun to focus on the effects of stress on impulsivity and on the distinction between two different types of impulsivity: functional and dysfunctional. +

Dysfunctional impulsivity has been widely studied. Dysfunctional impulsivity is “[?…] a tendency to initiate behavior before a situation has been analyzed adequately” (Caplan & Shecter, 1990). Functional impulsivity is defined as the tendency to act with relatively little forethought when such a style is optimal (Dickman, 1990). Previous research found that some traits related to functional impulsivity are enthusiasm, activity, and adventurousness (Dickman, 1990). This finding is consistent with the fact that these people report benefiting from their impulsiveness (Dickman, 1990). These individuals are more productive; they are also risk takers. It seems that when functional impulsives make a high number of errors it is offset by the amount of information they contribute to the task (Dickman, 1990). Functionally impulsive individuals work more quickly because they are intelligent (Dickman, 1990).

People who are dysfunctionally impulsive seem to work in the opposite way. They do not report beneficial outcomes attributed to their impulsivity. This is because they are characterized by disorderliness and tend to ignore information necessary to make accurate decisions (Dickman, 1990). There is evidence that shows functional and dysfunctional impulsives react differently when under stress and have differences in cost during accuracy tasks (Dickman, 1990).

A stressful situation is a situation that is threatening or demanding in which necessary resources are unavailable to cope with the situation (Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelstein, 1983). The stressor this study addresses is time pressure and its affect on accuracy of individual performance. Stress actually motivates performance (Corr & Kumari, 1998).for whom Other effects that occur under time pressure are acceleration of individual thought processing when making decisions, greater attention to the information available before making a choice, and looking for simple strategies to encourage accurate decisions (Verplanken, 1993). These individuals also reported that it was more difficult to make a decision under stressful conditions (Verplanken, 1993).

Research(all research is previous) also suggests that individuals low in impulsivity are sensitive to stress provoking stimuli, causing them to change their route of cognitive processing from automatic processing to controlled processing. In stressful situations, effort will increase, causing cognitive performance to improve (Corr & Kumari, 1998). These findings imply that impulsive people are greatly affected by stress. In addition, dysfunctionally impulsive people tend to have difficulty processing information; they will have more of a deficit in accuracy when put under pressure. Surprisingly, stress can create positive mood states on certain occasions if the stressor is viewed as a challenge and not a threat (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000). This would be characteristic of functional impulsives. Because individuals are enthusiastic and highly productive, they are more accurate in making decisions under stressful situations. Because functional impulsives are characterized by being more productive, they will be less affected by stress than will dysfunctional impulsives.

Accuracy in solving arithmetic tasks is measured in this study. Research proposed that stress causes participants to narrow their focus of attention and have a difficult time performing complex tasks (Zautra, Reich, Davis, Potter & Nicolson., 2000). Research has illustrated that functional impulsives are faster at processing information (Brunas-Wagstaff, Bergquist and Wagstaff, 1994). In stressful situations impulsive individuals will benefit from this trait. Results show less of a decrement to accuracy scores of participants. The underlying issue is that there is a difference in the way individuals cope and use strategy when completing stressful tasks (Becker & Schneider, 1976).

This study probes into the metacognitive abilities in functional and dysfunctional individuals. Research has suggested that personality plays a role in the accuracy of metacognition (Pallier, Wilkinson, Danthiir, Kleitman, Knezevic, Stankov, & Roberts, 2002). When subjects are faced with time pressure they are less confident about the decisions they make (Zautra et al., 2000). Time pressure affects confidence ratings. For this study, metacognition is defined as the predicted accuracy as determined by the participant, in comparison with the actual score received on a mathematical task. Mathematical tasks deal with the cognitive ability of problem solving. Problem solving causes confidence biases to occur because individuals tend to be over-confident about their knowledge (Pallier et al., 2002). In general, people are ignorant about their own intellectual and social skills (Hacker, Bol, Horgan & Rakow, 2000). However, the more intelligent one is, the better he or she is able to predict metacognitive abilities accurately (Pallier et al., 2002). Functional impulsives are more confident and accurate (Dickman, 1990). Confidence is an important factor in determining accuracy of self-assessment and it is therefore plausible to conclude that individuals who are functionally impulsive will be more accurate when making judgments about their performance. Metacognition is developed in youth and improves over time. The more experience a person has in certain fields, the better they are at predicting how well they did on a specific task. This is because individuals attribute past outcomes to future results (Hacker et al., 2000).

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After considering this information, it is hypothesized that when completing a mathematical task under stressful conditions, dysfunctionally impulsive individuals will complete the task with less accuracy than those who are functional impulsives. In addition, I am predicting an interaction such that functional impulsives will be more accurate in their percentage ratings for perceived scores (metacognition) and will be under-confident, while dysfunctional impulsives will be less accurate in their percentage ratings for perceived scores (metacognition) and over-confident.

Method

Participants+

Twenty undergraduates (10 functional impulsives and 10 dysfunctional impulsives) between the ages of 18-23 participated in this study and received extra credit. Each participant was placed in the stressful condition and in the non-stressful condition. Participants rated their performance according to the percentage that they thought they got correct on the math tasks after answering math questions in both conditions.

Materials

In order to assess the personality characteristic of impulsivity, the Eyesenck Personality Inventory Extraversion Scale (EPI-I Scale) was administered. Functional and dysfunctional impulsivity was measured by using the Dickman Impulsivity Inventory; DII (Claes, Vertommen, & Braspenning, 2000). Stress was measured using the Perceived Stress Scale; PSS (Cohen et al., 1983). This scale is designed to measure the degree of stress one experiences in his or her life in specific situations. A minor change was made for the purpose of this study. Instead of using the phrase “in the last month” it was modified to “during this task”. This scale is an accurate measure of life-event impact measures (Cohen, et al., 1983).

Two arithmetic tasks were implemented in order to control for learning effects. Each consisted of 15 problems, randomly assigned from Grabetter and Wallnau. A short questionnaire was given to all participants. The questions were 1. “How many math courses have you taken at St. Bonaventure University?” and 2. What percentage of the items on the math tasks do you think you answered correctly?”

Procedure

The present study was completed over a 2 day period. On the first day participants were given impulsivity tests. The Eyensenck Personality Inventory and the Dickman Impulsivity Inventory were used to determine impulsivity and the levels they exhibited. The DII was then used to distinguish between functional impulsives and dysfunctional impulsives. On the second day, the 10 participants who were functional impulsives were put into a stressful time pressure situation and told to complete a 15 question arithmetic task in 6 minutes. They were told to finish the questions as quickly as possible and to do their best. Every 2 minutes the participants were reminded of how much time they had to finish. In addition, the same participants were put into a situation that was not stressful in which the task was not timed. Participants were given unlimited time to finish the arithmetic task and told to take their time and do their best. After participating in each condition, participants completed the short questionnaire to determine their metacognitive abilities and to investigate whether there is was a difference between metacognitive abilities under stressful versus non-stressful conditions. Dysfunctional impulsives also went through both of these conditions and were given the short questionnaire. The participates were given the PSS immediately after completing the questionnaire to ensure that participants in the time pressure conditions were experiencing stress. After the task was completed, the number of correct answers on the task was measured. This is the accuracy score.

Results

The results were analyzed using 3(I thought you had 2 2x2s) 2 (functional vs. dysfunctional impulsivity) x 2 (stress vs. no stress) analyses of variance. It is a within subject design with two dependent variables. The two dependent variables are metacognition, or perceived scores, and real accuracy scores. Direct me to Figure 1

Three separate analyses of variance were used to analyze the data. The first analysis of variance measured real accuracy scores. There was a main effect for type of impulsivity F (1, 18) = 38.926, p <.05 and there was also a main effect for stress level, or time pressure, F (1, 18) = 4.539, p < .05 and no interaction. The second measured perceived scores, again, there was a main effect for type of impulsivity F (1, 18) = 26.982 p < .05 and a main effect for stress level F (1, 18) = 5.154 p < .05. Similar to the first, there was no interaction. In the third analysis of variance individual perceived scores were subtracted from real accuracy scores in order to determine metacognition, or how close they came to the real score when making predictions. These subtracted results were put into an analysis of variance and there was a main effect for type of impulsivity F (1, 18) = 16.012 p < .05 and a main effect for stress level F (1, 18) = 7.175) p < .05. There was no interaction for this analysis of variance.

Save for discussion In terms of metacognition, dysfunctional impulsives were less accurate in their percentage ratings and over-confident in their confidence ratings according to the means.

Under stressful conditions individuals were less confident in their judgments. Individuals who were more intelligent and had a history of doing well on tests, (functional impulsives) were under-confident in self-assessment and those who were less intelligent and did not do well on tests (dysfunctional impulsives) were overconfident in self-assessment (Palier et al., 2002).

Though the functional impulsives have high speed for information-processing and showed some inaccurate answers, their method of processing was found to be “functional” under the specific conditions of the experiment. Functional impulsives had higher scores and higher accuracy when answering the questions.(Dickman, 1990). Individuals who were dysfunctionally impulsive had lower accuracy scores.

Discussion

The results showed that functional impulsives did in fact have higher accuracy scores than dysfunctional impulsives. There was also a difference in stress. When in a stressful situation accuracy scores were lower than when the participants were placed in a non-stressful situation. The same results were found using perceived scores and metacognitive scores. The hypotheses predicted main effects. However, the hypothesis also predicted interactions, and this was not found.

There are some reasons the results did not completely coincide with the hypotheses made. For instance, the stressful condition may not have been stressful enough. The individuals may have been borderline dysfunctional or borderline functional. The extremes of this personality trait may have been necessary in order to result in a significant interaction. Some individuals may have been better in math than others and taken more math courses recently this could also pose a bias in the results.

(what happen to your font here?)In reference to metacognition, individuals generalize their cognitive abilities, causing them to predict consistent levels of confidence. Because of this pattern, confidence ratings are often inaccurate (Pallier et al., 2002). Very little research has been done to look at the effects of personality on metacognition. The present study implements procedures to investigate this growing area of research (Pallier et al., 2002). This may cause a bias in confidence ratings.

In future research it is suggested that participants be placed in a more stressful condition, and extreme personalities are assessed. Metacognition could also be measured in different ways that would be more effective. For instance, one might look at how confident one is in his or her predictions, rather than only the perceived scores. A different task could also be used besides a math task to ensure that the situation was stressful. A different task could be used so that learning bias does not take place. For instance anagrams could be used. These are all things that future researchers should delve deeper into. If this is done properly it may be possible to find significant interactions.

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