Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Arousal: Theory & Practice (What is stress? (Historical overview…

- - - - homeostasis: maintenance of physiology within acceptable ranges eg. core temperature, blood glucose
      - sensors recognize discrepancies between the sensed and set acceptable values
      - effectors reduce discrepancies (negative feedback systems)
      - psychosocial threats
      - “fight or flight” responses (acute changes in adrenal gland secretion)
      - Rapid activation of the sympathoadrenal system : compensatory adjustments
      - noradrenaline as the major sympathetic neurotransmitter
    - - popularizing the concept of stress
      - nonspecificity of response/ one response pattern
      - prolonged stress--> physical & mental disease
      - heterostasis: new steady state by changing the set point, enhances natural defenses
      - 3 universal stages of coping with a stressor:
        
        Alarm reaction: acute, analogous to Cannon's flight/fight response
        
        Adaptation stage: chronic, resistance to the stressor
        
        Exhaustion stage: chronic, organismic death
    - - organism maintains a constant fluid environment: milieu intérieur
      - continual compensatory changes of bodily functions
    - - stress as a consciously or unconsciously sensed threat to homeostasis (but ranges of acceptable values are inconsistent)
      - response has a degree of specificity
      - taking into account: particular challenge to homeostasis, the organism's perception of the stressor and the perceived ability to cope with it
      - Allostasis
- - - - noradrenaline --> active escape, avoidance, attack
        adrenaline --> passive, immobile fear
      - adaptation to particular challenge to homeostasis
      - depends on prior experience
    - - Different homeostats can regulate the activity of the same effector system
- - - - solution: change arousal level in a covert manner
  - - - the effects of one stressor may only be slight BUT Since they are then working at their limits, the presence of a second adverse condition cannot be adequately counteracted → performance suffers → the combined impairment produced by two stressors would be greater than that predicted by summing the separate effects.
      - application of Selye’s general adaptation syndrome
    - - inverted-U relation between arousal and the efficiency of performance
      - improvements in performance under “moderate” levels
    - - effects of individual stressors on the five-choice task provide a baseline for examining the effects of combined stressors
      - impairment to be less pronounced at the beginning of the work period (some support for depletion argument)
      - Stressors: fatigue, noise, sleep loss, incentives, heat, alcohol, scopolamine, time of the day
      - support for arousal theory: arousal is reduced by sleep loss and increased by noise and incentives
        
        incentive counteracts the effect of sleep loss (BUT this could fit many theories)
        
        noise counteracts the effect of sleep loss
        
        incentive aggravates the effect of noise
        
        interaction between noise and incentives