Chapter 4 - Physical and Psychological Stress Flashcards
What is beneficial and what is problematic by dividing stress into physical and psychological?
The distinction is at once useful shorthand to distinguish between stressors that start out in the body or ones that start out as ifeas, fears, and sources of anxiety that only later become parts of the workings of the body (dualism alert!)
It is problematic because our two categories are not completely separable.
What can exercise tell us about the body’s response to stressors?
Exercise is an excellent example of incrased coping with repeated exposure. However, it is possible for a person who enjoys exercise to increase the level of physical demand from session to session beyond the body’s ability to respond adaptively and recover fully, making exercise a long-term physical stress. Runners habitually training more than 72 km per week at moderate to high intensity are known to have chronically elevated cortisol levels and negative mood states.
What are the endocrine changes associated with the fight-or flight response?
The endocrine reponse is the same as during exercise, including epinephrine, cortisol and beta-endorphin.
What are the autonomic nervous system changes associated with the fight-or flight reponse?
The autonomic nervous system changes associated with the fight-or flight reponse are a general suppression of parasympathetic activity and increased sympathetic activity.
What is the main difference between the stress response during exercise and during fight-or flight?
During exercise, the physiological changes occur as a reponse to the increased energy demands of the muscles. In fight-or flight these same changes occur as a result of top-down processes.
A task often used in experimental studies on mental stressors is the mental arithmetic task. Describe it.
The mental arithmetic task require the volunteer to calculate answers to arithmetic problems without benefit of paper and pencil. One example is to give the subject a three-digit number (238) and ask him or her to add the digits togeter (13) and then add the sum to the original number (251). The answer is another three-digit number and the same calculations are repeated on each new number until the end of the task period.
What are typical physiological responses to the mental arithmetic task?
Increased heart rate and contractility. Significant increases in cortisol secretion.
In a series of experiments, subjects were given a cognitively demanding task that had unpredictable aversive consequences of failure. The same task was given, but with predictable beneficial consequences for success. What was the physiological difference?
Both groups had a stress response. Blood pressure was elevated and cardiac function was elevated. Norepinephrine increased as well. But only the aversive task gave changes in cortisol secretion.
What seems to determine cortisol secretion during distress?
We don’t know. But we have found that the amount of cortisol rise is positively correlated with the negative perceptions of the subjects being tested.
