Date of Submission

5-10-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology

Advisor

Kimberly S. Creig, Ph.D.

Keywords

Stress, Selective Attention, College Student Athletes, Perceived stress Scale (PSS-14), Flanker Task

LCSH

Stress (Physiology), College athletes, Selectivity (Psychology)

Abstract

Student athletes face unique stressors from balancing academic and athletic demands (Lopes Dos Santos et al., 2020), which may deplete cognitive resources and impair focus. The present study examined the relationship between perceived stress and selective attention among college student athletes. Stress was conceptualized as the interaction between external pressures and individual coping responses (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Twenty undergraduate student athletes from the University of New Haven completed the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14) and a computerized Flanker task measuring selective attention, but only eighteen were used in the final correlation analysis. It was hypothesized that higher levels of perceived stress would be associated with decreased selective attention performance. Correlational analyses indicated that there was no correlation between perceived stress and selective attention performance in this sample. These findings do not support the hypothesis and suggest that stress may not be directly related to selective attention among college student athletes. Future research should incorporate objective indicators of stress, such as physiological measures, alongside self-report measures to provide a more comprehensive and less biased assessment of stress.

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