PSY372H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Reduced Affect Display, Cortisol, Homeostasis
Document Summary
The effect of stress on learning and memory performance follows inverted u function. Acute stress enhances encoding but impairs retrieval. Related to life-threatening situations, but not necessarily all the time. Undergraduate student working at a hospital, find a body in a morgue ripped apart: not a stressful situation, however student kept picturing it years later. 3 categories of symptoms (in addition to flight or flight stress related symptoms) Avoiding reminders: emotional numbness: do(cid:374)"t (cid:449)a(cid:374)t to e(cid:374)gage i(cid:374) the sa(cid:373)e a(cid:272)ti(cid:448)ities (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause these a(cid:272)ti(cid:448)ities are associated with the traumatic incident from the past. Re-living the event: this includes people, places, and events, flashbacks to the scenes through dreams, which has the same physiological reaction if the individual was in the initial terror, body realizes that it is re-living it. Irritable, cautious: this is associated with not sleeping, feelings of anger. Individual is unable to relax, which leads to violence or suicide.
