C26 Stress at the test
narrowed 1 attack: 1 narrowed · serves Q1 · last change 4 November 2026
Acute stress just before or during a memory test lowers adults' recall of earlier-learned material by about a fifth of a standard deviation compared with no stress, more for emotional material, but only in studies that left out women taking hormonal contraceptives; where they were included, the average effect was about zero.
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Where it holds
All limits (7)
Inside the circle: the core of the claim. Outside: every bound and carve-out in the claim file, numbered, with the attack that forced or added it where the record shows one.
forced by a narrowing attackin the original wordingwritten at creation, or added without a narrowing
Warm cards in the list were added by later attacks; plain cards were in the original draft or written at creation.
Laboratory stressors (for example public speaking or cold water) shortly before or during retrieval of episodic memories, mostly in young adults; not chronic stress, not stress during learning (Shields et al. find that pattern differs), and not school exams directly.
Written when the claim was created (29 October 2026); not forced by an attack
Evidence on file: Shields, Sazma, McCullough & Yonelinas 2017 (Psychological Bulletin, DOI 10.1037/bul0000100; full text): stress just before or during retrieval impaired memory, g = −.215 (95% CI −.346 to −.085; 31 studies, N = 1,410), larger for emotional than neutral material; Egger's test showed publication bias for these retrieval effects (t(29) = −3.27, p = .003), and trim-and-fill estimated one missing study, after which the impairment was still significant (p = .002), so the true effect may be somewhat smaller than −.215 (corrected 2026-11-03).
Written when the claim was created (29 October 2026); not forced by an attack
Wording changed later: Added with attack #1 (corrected; it did not narrow the claim) · Shields, Sazma, McCullough & Yonelinas 2017 · 3 November 2026.
Population bound (weakened 2026-11-04, nightly attack; Shields et al. 2017 full text, §Retrieval and Figure 9): of the moderators tested (age, sex, contraceptive exclusion, menstrual-phase exclusion, stressor type, memory task, encoding–retrieval delay, time of day), only exclusion of women taking hormonal contraceptives moderated stress effects on retrieval (t(8.1) = −3.44, p = .009; all other ps > .185): studies that excluded them g+ = −.294 (t(23.2) = −4.14, p < .001); studies that did not g+ = .101 (t(5.2) = 1.15, p = .302; the authors call it negligible).
Forced by attack #2 · Shields, Sazma, McCullough & Yonelinas 2017 · 4 November 2026
Caveats: "did not exclude" also covers studies that did not report exclusion, and the not-excluded subset is small (df = 5.2).
Forced by attack #2 · Shields, Sazma, McCullough & Yonelinas 2017 · 4 November 2026
Consistent with this, a registered-report experiment with 177 adults (82% women, about half of them on hormonal contraceptives; stress 10 minutes before the test) found no stress effect on recall or recognition (Marr, Sauerland, Otgaar, Quaedflieg & Hope 2021, Memory 29(3), 330–344, DOI 10.1080/09658211.2021.1893750; powered only for a medium effect).
Forced by attack #2 · Shields, Sazma, McCullough & Yonelinas 2017 · 4 November 2026
Klier & Buratto 2020 (Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, DOI 10.1590/2237-6089-2019-0077; abstract only): systematic review of 13 controlled studies (N = 962) of stress after learning and up to an hour before the test.
Written when the claim was created (29 October 2026); not forced by an attack
Claim sentence shortened 2026-11-04 (Jonatan approved the short-claims rule): the subgroup sizes (excluded g+ = −.294; not excluded g+ = .101, ns) are kept above; meaning unchanged.
Added on 4 November 2026 when the claim was reworded (not an attack)
3 of 7 bounds and carve-outs were forced by a specific attack.
How it changed
The ledger records 1 attack (and 2 corrections to our notes), but no earlier wording of C26 is on record, so the text cannot be replayed step by step. Only the current wording is shown.
Acute stress just before or during a memory test lowers adults' recall of earlier-learned material by about a fifth of a standard deviation compared with no stress, more for emotional material, but only in studies that left out women taking hormonal contraceptives; where they were included, the average effect was about zero.
What would change this
What would kill it: A meta-analysis or large preregistered study of controlled human experiments finds no impairment, or a reliable improvement, when acute stress comes shortly before or during retrieval. Added as a claim on 29 October 2026, promoted from a candidate belief in the evidence library.
Attack record
1 attack: 1 narrowed. Counts of attacks, not a score.
Full attack list (1)
C26 states a general adult effect (about −0.2 SD at retrieval), but in the very meta-analysis it rests on, the only significant moderator of retrieval effects was whether studies excluded women taking hormonal contraceptives: excluded g+ = −.294 (p < .001), not excluded g+ = .101 (p = .302, "negligible"); a registered-report experiment with about half the women on contraceptives also found no impairment.
Strongest reading and verdict reasoning
Steelmans to: C26 is worded for adults in general; Shields' own moderator analysis (§Retrieval, Figure 9) shows that the pooled −.215 is carried by studies that left out contraceptive users, and in studies that included them the average was close to zero and not significant. Queued by study mining 2026-11-04.
Why: Nightly-attacks run of 2026-11-04 Europe/Stockholm. Checked tonight in the stored full text: "only exclusion of contraceptives emerged as a moderator of stress effects on retrieval (all other ps > .185), t(8.1) = −3.44, p = .009"; "If a study … did not exclude women taking hormonal contraceptives, the effect of stress on retrieval was negligible, g+ = .101, t(5.2) = 1.15, p = .302"; excluded: g+ = −.294, t(23.2) = −4.14, p < .001; largest reliable effect (emotional items, contraceptive users excluded) g+ = −.388. Marr et al. 2021 (N = 177, 82% women, about half on contraceptives): no stress effect on recall or recognition (planned ps .20–.70), but powered only for a medium effect, so it is supporting context, not the basis. Steelman for the claim: "not excluded" also means "not reported", the subset has few degrees of freedom (df = 5.2), and the pooled estimate across all studies is still −.215 and significant; so this narrows the population, it does not kill. Not a duplicate (the 2026-11-03 entry was the publication-bias correction); not a restatement of an existing Bound (Bounds named young adults and lab stressors, not contraceptive use). Not a preprint. Kill-match check (the routing method): the new text concedes a null subgroup, but the kill line ("a meta-analysis or large preregistered study … finds no impairment, or a reliable improvement") still names a result the claim does not concede for studies of men and non-users; not a kill-mismatch.
Corrections to our notes
These fix a number or a fact in our notes. They are not attacks and do not count toward the floor of 3 survivals.
- — C26's limits report Shields et al. 2017's g = −.215 for stress at retrieval without the paper's own publication-bias finding for that effect.
Details
What was checked: Bounds (not a kill-condition test).
Why: Nightly-attacks run of 2026-11-03 Europe/Stockholm. Checked tonight in the full text: Egger's test showed publication bias for stress effects on retrieval, t(29) = −3.27, p = .003; trim-and-fill estimated one missing study (SE = 3.51), and with it the retrieval effect was still significant, p = .002. A correction of the evidence picture, not a test of the claim.
- — Wording change only, not an attack: the claim sentence was reworded without new evidence.
Details
What was checked: wording only (not a kill-condition test; no survival, no streak change).
Why: Claim sentence shortened to its core; subgroup numbers stay in Bounds; meaning unchanged.
Evidence
3 linked sources: 2 supports, 2 limits (first-pass draft, pending human review). supports: Shields et al. 2017, Klier & Buratto 2020 · limits: Marr et al. 2021, Shields et al. 2017