Tools: Physiology

Question 1

Arousal

Answer 1

A state of awake alertness that facilitates optimal performance by engaging the autonomic nervous sytem
Low arousal - sub-optimal zone (inactive, too relaxed)
Moderate arousal - optimal zone for performance
High arousal - stress zone (anxiety, panic, anger, fear)

Question 2

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

Answer 2

2 components - sympathetic and parasympathetic
Parasympathic
- controlled by acetylcholine
- slower responding system
- regulates the sympathetic nervous system
- responsible for regulating facial components and eyes, e.g. constricting the pupil
– paired bodily responses tightly bound so difficult to measure separately (e.g. respiration and heart rate)
Sympathetic
- adrenaline and noradrenaline
- associated with flight/fight in response to severe threat in environment causing high arousal
– whole body response/arousal state

Question 3

Heart rate - ECG

Answer 3

Measures time between heart beats
e.g. showing infants sesame streets videos led to slowing heart rate as attention increased

Question 4

Skin conductance

Answer 4

Can place electrodes on the skin and measure resistance between them
Increase of arousal - increase of sweat - decrease in resistance

Question 5

Skin conductance

Answer 5

Can place electrodes on the skin and measure resistance between them
Increase of arousal - increase of sweat - decrease in resistance
– galvanic skin response

Developmental pops:
- infants/sensory needs may have less tolerance if uncomfortable

Question 6

Respiration rate

Answer 6

A band that goes around the chest that measuring increased stretching when respiration increases

Question 7

Pupillometry / eye tracking

Answer 7

Constriction and dilation of the pupil
Pupils dilate in response to processing information - the sooner they dilate, the quicker processing
Need to be careful with stimuli as visual light can also cause constriction and not a bodily attention response
– could overcome by using sound paradigms instead of visual

Developmental populations:
- little modification - can increase attention by using drawing sounds (target alerting system)
- account for positional head tilt/bias of infants

Question 8

Measuring stress/reactivity

Answer 8

Invasive: drawing blood
Non-invasive: salivette - cotton swap that collects saliva
– done to capture amount of cortisol
– more cortisol, more stress as the ANS system has been increasing in activity and the need to remain alert

Question 8

Measuring stress/reactivity

Answer 8

Invasive: drawing blood
Non-invasive: salivette - cotton swap that collects saliva
– done to capture amount of cortisol
– more cortisol, more stress as the ANS system has been increasing in activity and the need to remain alert

Developmental pops:
- salivette - no drawing blood as too invasive
- sensory needs, e.g. cotton swab - can drool down tube or modify pacifier to collect and stimulate saliva glands
- can dip in flavoured powder to make more appealing

Question 9

Trier Social Stress Task (TSST) - Labuschagne et al. 2019

Answer 9

Measure baseline cortisol before task (roughly 20 mins)
10 min introductory and anticipatory task (planning, e.g. a speech) - take sample at 5 and 10 mins
10 minute on the spot task - sample after
10 minute debrief
35 minute recover

Can alter for different timings or tasks, e.g. using strange situation as a stress task for infants, social evaluation stress task for adolescents

Question 10

Cortisol and regulation

Answer 10

Metabolism - cortisol peaks in the morning and drops off during the day
Resting cortisol informs of health and individual differences

BEIP children - later adoption showed higher cortisol at the same time points compared to early adoption - had to regulate at higher levels at any given time

Question 11

Confounds in measurement

Answer 11

ANS changes over development

Question 12

Confounds in measurement

Answer 12

ANS changes over development
Environment also is difficult to control and can have an effect, e.g. increased skin conductance if warm, light constricting pupil (confounds - have to try and keep controlled across conditions) - difficult in naturalistic which we get best observations from
Cortisol fluctuations over the day
– always need a baseline

Question 13

Simultaneity - mixed methods

Answer 13

Mixed arousal and multiple informants to measure arousal (typically just 2)
Can group different items together at the same time - more holistic and increased understanding of whole sympathetic arousal/ANS activity
Can converge data
Helps eliminate noise