Biopysch: circadian rhythms

Question 1

what is a circadian rhytm

Answer 1

a bodily cycle that lasts for about a day. Bodily processes & behaviour change in response to internal factors (endogenous e.g hormones) or external factors (exogenous e.g light)

Question 2

Siffre’s cave study

Answer 2

• spent 2 months in French Alps cave
• no access to light or sound
• recordings of his daily routine & what time he thought it was
• his ‘free running’ body clock 25 hours long
• he left in September thinking it was August

Question 3

Aschoff & Wever (1976)

Answer 3

• group of participants spend 4 weeks in an old WW2 bunker without natural light
• their sleep & wake cycle settled between 24 & 25 hours
• one with 29 hours
• Our body clock is slightly longer than 24 hours but is trained by external cues

Question 4

Evaluation: strength

Answer 4

real world application - night shifts work experience lower concentration in the early hours and this is correlated with higher rates of industrial accidents

Question 5

Evaluation: strength

Answer 5

real world application - pharmacokinetics - drug companies can use this knowledge to ensure chemotherapy is as effective as possible

Question 6

Evaluation: weakness

Answer 6

research based on a small sample - hard to generalise to a wider population

Question 7

Evaluation: weakness

Answer 7

relative lack of control - Siffre used artificial light which will still affect the sleep/wake cycle.

Question 8

Evaluation: weakness

Answer 8

individual differences - a huge amount of variation in people’s body clock lengths - our clock seems to ‘slow’ as we get older