Eyewitnesses may experience stress during a crime and when attempting to identify the perpetrator subsequently. Laboratory studies can provide insight into how acute stress at encoding and retrieval affects memory performance. However, previous findings exploring this issue have been mixed. Across two preregistered experiments, we examined the effects of stress during encoding and retrieval on face and word recognition performance. We used the Maastricht Acute Stress Test (MAST) to induce stress and verified the success of the stress manipulation with blood pressure measures, salivary cortisol levels, and negative affect scores. To examine differences in stressor timing, participants encoded target faces or words both when confronted with the stressor and during the subsequent cortisol peak and retrieved these stimuli 24 h later. We found neither effects of acute stress on face recognition memory during encoding or retrieval (Experiments 1 and 2), nor effects of encoding stress on word recognition memory (Experiment 2). Bayesian analyses largely provided substantial or strong evidence for the null hypotheses. We emphasize the need for well-powered experiments using contemporary methodology for a more complete understanding of the effect of acute stress on face recognition memory.

目击者可能会在犯罪过程中以及随后试图确定肇事者时感到压力。实验室研究可以深入了解编码和检索时的急性压力如何影响记忆性能。然而，之前探索这个问题的发现有好有坏。在两个预先注册的实验中，我们检查了编码和检索过程中压力对面部和单词识别性能的影响。我们使用马斯特里赫特急性压力测试 (MAST) 来诱发压力，并通过血压测量、唾液皮质醇水平和负面影响评分验证压力操作的成功。为了检查压力源时间的差异，参与者在面对压力源时和随后的皮质醇峰值期间对目标面孔或单词进行编码，并在 24 小时后检索这些刺激。我们没有发现在编码或检索过程中急性压力对人脸识别记忆的影响（实验 1 和 2），也没有发现编码压力对单词识别记忆的影响（实验 2）。贝叶斯分析在很大程度上为无效假设提供了实质性或强有力的证据。我们强调需要使用现代方法进行强有力的实验，以便更全面地了解急性压力对人脸识别记忆的影响。