5. Consciousness

Question 1

What is consciousness?

Answer 1

A person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind

Question 2

What is phenomenology?

Answer 2

How things seem to the conscious person

Question 3

What is the problem of other minds?

Answer 3

The fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others

Only you know what it is like to be

Question 4

What happened on the survey to compare minds of 13 targets?

Answer 4

People judge minds according to the capacity for experience and agency

Baby little agency, lots of experience
PVS man little agency or experience

Question 5

What did Behaviourism add to consciousness?

Answer 5

Eliminate consciousness from psychology entirely

Question 6

What is the mind-body problem?

Answer 6

How mind is related to body

Question 7

When a person decides to move, when does the brain show activity?

Answer 7

Before the conscious decision to move

Question 8

What are the four basic properties of consciousness?

Answer 8

1. Intentionality: direction
2. Unity: resistance to division
3. Selectivity: include some not others
4. Transience: stream

Question 9

What are three levels of consciousness?

Answer 9

1. Minimal: sleep turning over
2. Full: aware of having mental state
3. Self: focus on self

Question 10

How to know what’s on people’s minds?

Answer 10

Think aloud
Report conscious experiences
Current concerns
Daydreaming
Default network

Question 11

What is the default network?

Answer 11

Areas of the brain that are activated when people work on a mental task they know well when they’re not busy

Question 12

What is mental control?

Answer 12

Attempt to change conscious states of mind

Question 13

What is thought suppression?

Answer 13

Conscious avoidance of a thought

Question 14

Rebound effect of suppression

Answer 14

Tendency of a suppressed though to return to consciousness with greater frequency

Question 15

What are Ironic processes of mental control?

Answer 15

Ironic errors occur because the mental process that monitors errors can itself produce them

Question 16

What is Freud’s dynamic unconscious?

Answer 16

An active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, deep instincts and inner struggle to control them

Question 17

What is repression?

Answer 17

Removing unacceptable thoughts from consciousness

Question 18

What is posthypnotic amnesia?

Answer 18

Failure to retrieve memories following hypnotic suggestions to forget

Question 19

True or false: only memories that were lost under hypnosis can be retrieved through hypnosis

Answer 19

True

Question 20

What is hypnotic analgesia?

Answer 20

Reduction of pain through hypnosis

Question 21

What is the Stroop task? How can it be done under hypnosis?

Answer 21

Naming colours in other colours

Hypnotized people had no trouble doing it

Question 22

How do the brains of hypnotized people look when asked to see colour?

Answer 22

Regions of the brain responsible for colour vision activated when hypnotized people were asked to perceive colour, even when shown gray stimuli
Decreased activity in anterior cingulate cortex, part of the brain in conflict monitoring