dc.contributor.author	Nackley, Brittany B.	en
dc.contributor.committeechair	Friedman, Bruce H.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Ollendick, Thomas H.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Jones, Russell T.	en
dc.contributor.department	Psychology	en
dc.date.accessioned	2020-09-18T17:06:23Z	en
dc.date.available	2020-09-18T17:06:23Z	en
dc.date.issued	2020	en
dc.description.abstract	Understanding physiological responses to threat can inform therapeutic interventions for phobias, anxieties, and PTSD. The defense cascade is reviewed as a theoretical model that predicts behavioral and physiological responses to threats. Nineteen undergraduates (five male), average age 19.4 experienced a novel virtual reality (VR) threat scenario while their physiology was measured. The Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS) was used as a self-report indicator of distress in the research setting. Averaged SUDS reports suggested that the VR stimulus was experienced as threatening for most participants, but their autonomic response patterns did not fit those predicted by the defense cascade. Participants who had scored high on adaptive response questionnaires tended to show uncoupled ANS activation during baseline, but varied across the stimulus condition. Nearly all participants showed either coactivation or reciprocal activation during the stimulus period except those reporting the most dissociative trauma experiences, who mostly showed uncoupled ANS activation.	en
dc.description.abstractgeneral	The more we understand about how people’s bodies and their energies act when they feel threatened, the better we can find help for folks who struggle with anxiety, trauma or other challenging conditions. This research uses a theoretical model called the defense cascade to explore how people respond mentally and physically to threatening situations. Nineteen undergraduates went through a virtual reality (VR) experience that was designed to feel threatening while their body and its energy systems were measured. A scale was introduced called the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS) and was used to help the researchers understand how distressed people felt while they were in the VR experience. Averaged SUDS reports suggested that the VR stimulus was experienced as threatening for most participants, but their body response patterns did not fit those predicted by the defense cascade. Participants whose questionnaire responses suggested they were not anxiety-prone or traumatized, tended to show bodily activation that uncoupled their two autonomic bodily systems during a baseline period before the threatening stimulus. However, their autonomic responses during the stimulus period varied. Nearly all participants showed either both autonomic systems acting together or only one system acting in a mutually exclusive way to the other system during the stimulus period. This was the case for most participants except those reporting the most trauma involving dissociative experiences. This latter group mostly showed uncoupled autonomic bodily patterns.	en
dc.description.degree	M.S.	en
dc.format.medium	ETD	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10919/99987	en
dc.language.iso	en_US	en
dc.publisher	Virginia Tech	en
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/	en
dc.subject	defense cascade	en
dc.subject	physiology	en
dc.subject	autonomic nervous system	en
dc.subject	sympathetic nervous system	en
dc.subject	parasympathetic nervous system	en
dc.subject	time series	en
dc.subject	Subjective Units of Distress	en
dc.subject	SUDS	en
dc.subject	trauma	en
dc.subject	autonomic space	en
dc.subject	cardiac autonomic balance	en
dc.subject	cardiac autonomic regulation	en
dc.title	Temporal Dynamics of the Defense Cascade	en
dc.type	Thesis	en
thesis.degree.discipline	Biological Psychology	en
thesis.degree.grantor	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	en
thesis.degree.level	masters	en
thesis.degree.name	M.S.	en

Temporal Dynamics of the Defense Cascade

Files

Original bundle

License bundle

Collections