W4: Manipulating stress and fatigue Flashcards
The way we measure the immune system is the similar way we measure hormones
- People saliva and blood to measure interleukin that cause fever and inflammation
Measuring long term/chronic stress (2)
- Difficult to measure experimentally - ethics??
- Tend to utilise longitudinal designs with self-report methods to measure stress
What is fatigue? (3)
- Occurs after prolonged mental exertion
- Results in deficits in inhibition and self-control
- Often considered a “lighter” form of stress
Fatigue - “lighter” form of stress (3)
- Short-term stress response, fast recovery from fatigue (more ethical)
- Mimicks stuff individuals go through from a day-to-day basis (more ecological validity)
- SAM activation, not necessarily HPA activity
Stress
when does stress occur and results in? (2)
- Occurs after extremely demanding and threatening task
- Results in deficits in inhibition and self-control
Such intense and prolonged experiences of stress that SAM is not enough
Stress engages systems linked with long-term stress response (4)
- Cardiovascular system
- Endocrine system
- Immune system
Why differentiate between fatigue and stress?
Fatigue (4)
- Fatigue is consistent with “everyday” stress
- Daily hassles in life
- They are small but frequent stressors
- Smaller effects in behaviour and physiology
Why differentiate between fatigue and stress? (3)
- Stress is consistent with relatively rare, threatening experiences
- Frequency of these in everyday life differ by individual
- Like factors such as social/cultural influences
- Larger effects in changes in behaviour and physiology
Examples of fatigue tasks
- Restricted writing task
- Vowel counting task
-
Emotion suppression
- Watch visceral film (e.g., animal abuse)
- Told to suppress any feelings elicited by the video
Restrited writing task Procedure (3)
- Participants given 7 minutes to write a story about a trip you have recently taken
- Control condition = write freely (no restrictions)
- Fatigue condition = cannot use letters A or N
Restricted Writing Task
Fatigue Condition
Can not use “and” use “plus” instead
Vowel counting task
Control condition
- Scanned page of the textbook (that is dense with statistics) and select/count every instance of the letter “e”
Vowel counting task
Fatigue condition (3)
- Scanned page of the textbook (dense with stats) and select/count every instance of the letter “e”
- Can not select an e if adjacent to another vowel or 2 letters away from vowel
- Page is brightened to make it difficult to read…
What can be asses to determine whether someone had a short-term stress response when fatigued? (3)
- Heart rate (influenced by SAM activity)
- Cognitive performance (tasks req attention)
- Physical exertion (their concentration on a task)
Stroop effect examines (3)
- differences between automatic (reading) versus controlled (inhibition) processes in attention
- Measuring diff of inhibiting reading of the word while actually saying colour of word
- State colour of text, ignore the word presented
Stroop effect results in terms of fatigue (short-term stress response) - (2)
Fatigue reduces performance on incongruent Stroop trials
- Longer reaction times
- Greater error rates
Inzlicht et al. (2007) Emotional Suppression Task + Stroop - Fatigue Results (2)
- In the suppression condition (fatigued) in incongruent trials (word ‘red’ printed in bleu ink) take longer to respond compared to congruent trials (‘red’ in red ink)
- In the suppression condition (fatigued) take longer to respond regardless of whether the word is congruent or incongruent compared to control (no suppression)
Fatigue affects physical exertion is tested via
Handgrip
Handgrip can measure
How long the pp hold on (time)
Strength (effort)
Handrip (strength and time somone holds onto something) is affected by
Fatigue
Inlizicht - Cost of suppression
Fatigue + handgrip results
- Suppression condition not able to hold onot the hangrip as long as those who do not suppress their emotions (control - not fatigued)
What are the two tests that can elicit/evoke stress? - (2)
- Trier Social Stress Test (TSST)
- Cold Pressor Test
Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) - (5)
PROCEDURE
- Anticipation stage (10 minutes) - told about the study and left in the room (anxious)
- Test period (after 10 minutes) to do two things:
- Impromptu speech/interview about your strength and weaknesses (5 minutes)
- Mental arithmetic (counting backwards; 5 minutes)
- Often performed in front of an audience
TSST is utiliseed as it is effective in (2)
Promotoing cortisol release
Engages long-term stress response (HPA axis)
Diagram of what the TSST procedure looks like:
TSST - If you are giving a speech and run out of things to say
What will the people say in the audience? (2)
Yell “PLEASE CONTINUE”
Panel instructed to be stoic and neutral while the pp talk about themselves
TSST - What if you incorrectly subtract during arithemtic? (2)
- Incorrectly halfway through subtracting 13 from 1022
- Failure results in restarting from 1022
TSST Results
Cortisol release
- Get spikes in cortisol after going through TSST (engaging HPA axis)
TSST Results
Heart Rate + Cortisol release - (2)
- Cortisol pike after the TSST task (15-20 min to detect cortisol in saliva) to infer that:
- See spike in HR increase during the TSST task due to SAM and HPA activity
Cold Pressor Test Procedure - (3)
- Place hand into freezing water (0-4 C°)
- Keep submerged up to 3 minutes
- Compared against warm water condition (controls)
Diagram of cold pressor test - physiological
Is cold water enough to elicit stress?
Physiological stress probably…
- Body engages system to maintain homeostasis and keep body cooler but would not elicit as much stress as you would on a everyday life situation (lack ecological validity)
Is cold water enough to elicit stress? - Psychological stress … (2)
- Adding social evaluation to cold pressor test - other people evaluating your performance
- Pps cold pressor test and recorded and told that their facial expressions will be evaluated/assessed
Cold pressor test
Diagram Psychological stress
Looking at salivarly cortisol and cold pressor tests
- Socially evaulated cold pressor test has significantly higher cortisol release (engage HPA axis) atfer the task occurs compared to when there is a simple cold pressor test with no social evaulation
Cold pressor test - systolic and diaolstici blood pressure (2)
- During the socially evaluated cold pressor test, there is increases in blood pressure
- HPA increases blood pressure
Heart rate
Could be either SAM/HPA axis
Cortisol and BP measure same axis
HPA axis
