My answer: Evan's sympathetic nervous system would have been immediately activated since he was startled by the tapping sound, which could have further activated the flight/fight/freeze response in his body and initiated physiological responses, such as an increase in heart rate so the heart beats more faster and blood and oxygen is pumped throughout the body at a more faster rate, dilation of pupils, etc.
This is unnecessary. I wouldn't waste the time/space on defining "heart rate" since it is pretty self-explanatory and afaik it's not a necessary definition for psychology.
As well as that, auditory receptors in Evan's ears would receive information on the tapping sound on his windows, and this information would be transmitted to the CNS via the sensory neurons (as part of the somatic and peripheral nervous system). The sensory information would then be received by the relevant lobes of the brain, including the temporal lobe, which would process the auditory information of the tapping sound and the frontal lobe, which would interpret the tapping sound as a potentially dangerous or life-threatening stimulus or sound and thus make a decision to pick up the cricket bat from the cupboard and open the curtains to investigate. That message would then be transmitted to the primary motor cortex, which would then deliver a message via motor neurons to the skeletal muscles in Evan's arms to pick up the cricket bat, open the curtains and approach and deal with the tapping sound through the activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
I still think there is a lot of superfluous explanation given here. E.g. "potentially dangerous or life-threatening sound or stimulus". Dangerous and life-threatening are almost synonymous and the sound
is the stimulus. Honestly writing "potentially dangerous stimulus" is taking seven words to three. If you're writing these on your laptop and not on paper, that might be the problem. Under timed and written conditions, it's much harder to bother with this kind of thing. That's what I found anyway. The bold parts are this ^
The final "through the activation of the sympathetic nervous system" is almost wrong in my opinion. The preceding explanation: "... pick up the cricket bat, open the curtains and approach and deal with the tapping sound" are all not governed by the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic system is definitely involved, but not there in my opinion.
I went back and read the original question actually (probably should have in the first place lol). Honestly, I think the key thing is the question:
Identify and explain the role of two relevant divisions of the nervous system in each of the scenarios below.
The focus should be on the
two relevant divisions of the nervous system. The process is idk good if you have the line space but otherwise, assuming this is a 3-point question, the marks would be: identifying one relevant division (1), identifying another (1), and explaining them with reference to the scenario (1). Or maybe identifying the divisions (1), explaining their use in the scenario (2).
Because of this, Joseph41's answer is actually great.
Sympathetic nervous system: Evan was startled etc.
Somatic nervous system: Voluntary movements etc.
If you need to have more explanation (again, judging by the amount of line space provided), then you can include some more.
But essentially, I think the advantage of having subheadings like Joseph41's example is that the "identifying" marks are done and dusted, indisputably. That could be 1/3 or even 2/3 marks.
Reading your response, I think it is a little difficult to distinguish
which systems you're trying to identify and how exactly they work in the scenario. It might not be as easy as compared to Joseph41's example to secure those 1 or 2 marks. And sometimes, if those 1-2 marks can't be awarded, the third is not because the nervous system function cannot be applied to the scenario if the assessor is unsure of which nervous systems are being emphasised.
Anyway!!! That's just what I think. I'd love to hear some other people's takes.