Towards an emotional stress test: psychometric evaluation of a non-subjective cognitive measure of anxious responding.

Response to stress is a key factor in mood and anxiety disorder aetiology. Current measures of stress-response largely rely on retrospective self-report and are associated with a number of limitations. Objectively quantifying individual differences in stress response would be a valuable step towards improving our understanding of disorder vulnerability.  Our goal is to develop a reliable, objective, within-subject probe of stress response. We sought to determine whether stress-potentiated performance on an inhibitory control task is a reliable individual measure of stress response from baseline to 2-4 weeks (n=50) and again after 5-9 months (n=22).