Mood affects attention in knowledge-free reasoning task, not scores

Abstract

Recent research disputes the idea that acute stress affects academic performance when prior knowledge is controlled, challenging the interference hypothesis. However, the impact of mood on cognitive performance in knowledge-free tests, such as matrix reasoning tasks, remains unclear. This study examines the effects of positive and negative mood inductions on matrix reasoning performance, focusing on behavioral and eye movement measures. Experiment 1 confirmed effective mood induction, with the negative valence group showing increased stress. Experiment 2 found that while mood induction did not affect overall performance, it influenced attention allocation. Participants in the positive valence group displayed a less structured scanpath than those in the negative valence group. These results question the interference hypothesis, suggesting that stress does not impair performance in knowledge-free tasks and highlight the importance of attention allocation in educational assessment contexts.