| Metacomprehension is the ability to evaluate one’s own reading comprehension. Individuals use cues or heuristics to judge their cognitions, outlined by the Cue Utilization Hypothesis (Koriat, 1997). Examples of cues that individuals use to make judgments include amount of time studying, how much information is recalled, etc.; yet, stress has never been tested as a metacognitive cue despite the pervasiveness of stress. Metacognitive monitoring is likely impacted by stress, as the Attentional Control Theory posits that stress decreases attentional control (Eysenck et al., 2007). Based on this theory, it was predicted that after an experimental manipulation of stress, those participants would have worse metacognitive monitoring compared to participants in a control condition. Stress was manipulated using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), which was followed by a metacomprehension monitoring task. While there were no main effects of condition, higher state anxiety correlated with lower prediction magnitude, and trait anxiety was associated with improved absolute accuracy. The Attentional Control Theory did not fully explain this effect; likely, distractions caused by stress acted as a cue to improve monitoring. This study provides the first experimental evidence that stress impacts metacomprehension monitoring, and opens the discussion for stress as a state-based cue. |