What does stress do to attention?

• A. It broadens attention and improves peripheral awareness.
• B. It can create tunnel vision or tunneling of attention.
• C. It has no effect on attention.
• D. It increases capacity to multitask.

Answer: (B)

Stress changes how arousal levels affect attention, often pushing the brain to focus on what's most salient or threatening. This leads to attentional narrowing, or tunnel vision, where you concentrate on a single element and miss other important cues in the environment. In aviation, that reduction in peripheral awareness can mean missing warning signals or unexpected events, which is why the option describing tunnel vision is the best fit.

The idea that stress broadens attention or improves peripheral awareness isn’t supported by how attention behaves under pressure. Stress typically narrows rather than widens focus. Saying stress has no effect ignores well-documented changes in perception and attention during stressful situations. And the notion that stress boosts multitasking capacity contradicts how cognitive load increases under pressure, usually reducing the ability to handle multiple tasks effectively.