Nervous System & Stress
It is responsible for sending messages to the CNS, and carrying out instructions sent from the CNS.
What is the role of the Peripheral Nervous System?
This refers to the long-lasting strengthening of synaptic connections, resulting in enhanced or more effective transmission.
What is long-term potentiation?
The condition that is affected by the IV and is also used to measure the effect of the IV.
What is a dependant variable?
A state of consciousness that is characterised by clear and organised alertness to internal and external stimuli. Characteristics include; moderate to high levels of awareness, good memory and cognitive abilities and a degree of self control.
What is normal waking consciousness (NWC)?
This refers to the ability to successfully cope with adversity, and to 'bounce back' and restore positive functioning.
What is resilience?
This is the body's response options to a threat. We can either confront it, escape from it, or become immobilised in its presence. It is also a survival response that occurs when the parasympathetic nervous system overrides the sympathetic nervous system when it is perceived that there is little chance of escaping.
What is the fight, flight, freeze response?
Chemical messengers that are manufactured by neurons and released from axon terminals into blood vessels where they get absorbed into the bloodstream and carried to target neurons or cells.
What are neurohormones?
This is an experimental design in which participants in the sample are randomly allocated to and have an equal chance of being in either a control group or experimental group.
What is an independent groups experimental design?
An objective measure that detects, amplifies and records electrical activity in the muscles around the eyes.
What is an electrooculograph (EEG)?
This is a psychological risk factor for developing a mental health disorder and involves repeatedly thinking about one's distress and undesirable thoughts and feelings, as opposed to its solutions.
What is rumination?
This is a simple and automatic response that is hardwired into our nervous system. It is unconscious and a very fast response, and does not involve the brain. It involves our sensory, motor and interneurons.
What is the Spinal Reflex/Reflex Arc?
This is the tendency to only respond to the CS and not other similar stimuli. For example, when the dog only salivates to the sound of a bell and not any other sound that might be similar to the bell.
What is stimulus discrimination?
A variable other than the IV that causes a change in the DV. This has an unwanted effect on the experiment, because it makes any 'causal' relationships between the IV and DV hard to establish.
What is an extraneous variable?
A type of brain wave characterised by low amplitude and a high frequency.
What are beta brain waves characterised by?
This is a model which explains the four types of influences that contribute to the development and progression of mental illnesses/disorders.
What is the 4P factor model?
The site where communication occurs and includes the terminal buttons of the presynaptic neuron and dendrites of the postsynaptic neuron.
What is the role of the synapse?
A model of memory that visualises memory as a system consisting of multiple memory stores through which a stream of data flows for processing. The model emphasises the storage structures of memory and suggests that information must pass through three memory stores in order to be stored for a long period of time.
What is the Atkinson- Shiffrin multi-store model of memory?
This might occur (in a repeated measures design) when the sequence in which a person does the tasks affects their performance on the tasks.
What are order effects?
A limitation of this data collection method is that it is very subjective - opening the door to bias. Another limitation is that participants may not be able to accurately be able to describe their experiences, or may not be honest.
What are limitations of sleep diaries?
This is a stage- based model that describes and explains how people intentionally change their behaviour to achieve a health-related goal. It describes behaviour change as occurring gradually over time and has specific relevance to changes in maladaptive or undesirable behaviours.
What is the transtheoretical model of behaviour change?
These are chemicals that can interfere with the transmission of messages across a synapse, as they can modify the response neurons make to a specific neurotransmitter. They can either make a neuron more or less likely to respond to a particular neurotransmitter.
What are neuromodulators?
The main function is to consolidate semantic and episodic memories. It is not a storage site, instead, it transfers components of the memory to the relevant cortex areas where the information was originally processed.
What is the function of the hippocampus?
This is an ethical principle which should only be used in research unless completely necessary. If this occurs, participants need to be fully debriefed afterwards.
What is deception in research?
A sleep disorder that disrupts a person's ability to sleep and wake for the periods of time necessary to maintain good health and wellbeing, caused by the sleep- wake cycle being out of sync with the natural night- day cycle of the external environment.
What is a circadian phase disorder?
This is a behaviour therapy for the treatment of specific phobia that aims to replace an undesirable response (such as fear), with a relaxation response through conditioning.
What is systematic desensitisation?