Chapter 4 Flashcards
Consciousness
- One’s moment-to-moment subjective experience of the world
- continuous stream
- persons subjective (personal) awareness
SQ: What do philosophers mean when they refer to “easy” and “hard” questions about consciousness?
Easy: Cognitive processes
- Materialistic approach
Hard: Why do qualia exist? Why aren’t we zombies?
Qualia
- Subjective (personal, individual) experiences of sensation (ex. do we all see colour the same? do foods taste the same to everyone?)
- We can’t know if one persons qualia is the same as the next persons because we all experience consciousness personally
Change Blindness
A failure to notice large changes in your environment
Q: How do the limits on consciousness contribute to change blindness?
- Major changes may go unnoticed if attention is focused elsewhere
- we can only focus on a few things at a time
How does attention work with your conscious?
- selects what can enter your consciousness since it is limited and only important things should be allowed in
What is the cocktail party effect and who coined the term? (Hint: name is a fruit)
Cocktail party effect refers to selective attention
- being able to only focus on the conversation you’re having with your friend and tuning out the party around you
Coined by: Psychologist E.C.Cherry
Selective Listening and Bottleneck Theories
Bottleneck theory: all info can’t come through one small bottle neck so we pick and choose what is important to listen to
Shadowing study done by…hint: same fruit dude
Cherry performed a shadowing study where info would be played through headphones on one ear of the participant and they would have to repeat the words that the researcher was listing to them while ignoring what was coming through the headphones
“Early” Recognition Theory
(Cherry) Selection occurs before recognition (ex. in one ear, out the other)
- unconsciously filtering out what is unimportant before being able to recognize and internalize the info
“Late” Recognition Theory
Moray’s Experiment
- same shadow experiment but one word would be the persons name and they would get tripped up once they realized
- Selection occurs after recognition
Endogenous Attention
Voluntary
(ENdogenous is withIN you)
- conscious decision, controlled processing
Exogenous Attention
Automatic, stimulus driven
(EXogenous is EXternal)
(ex. emotional response, sudden onset noise, etc.)
Q: You see an accident on the side of the road and can’t help but slow down to look at the traumatic scene. Why?
Because of the automatic emotional response to the stimuli
- an example of exogenous attention
Q: Why should you avoid using your laptop during lectures?
Multitasking:
Many students believe they are good at multitasking but the reality is that it’s impossible
- you may not feel like you missed important info but you also weren’t paying attention so you have no awareness of the events and can’t base your confidence off anything
Priming
Occurs when the response to a stimulus is influenced by recent experiences
(ex. asked to list words that start with “cha” -> just heard the sentence “the family was having dinner at the table” -> first response will most likely be “chair” because they were just thinking about dinner tables)
Subliminal Perception (subliminal = “existing or functioning below the threshold of consciousness”)
Processing information by sensory systems without conscious awareness
(ex. why movie theatres flash a message suggesting you buy a drink)
Q: Which type of subliminal messages are most likely to affect behaviour?
“Messages that invoke emotion or motivation may subtly shift behaviour, but such messages do not affect complex behaviours like buying or self-confidence”
Attention as a resource is limited. What is Capacity Theory?
Different tasks require different amounts of mental effort
Brain determines how that effort gets distributed by Automatic vs. Controlled processing
Automatic Processing
Learned, practiced (ex. reading (STROOP!))
What is Materialism and who is Thomas Nagel?
Materialism: Brain enables the mind and creates consciousness
Thomas Nagel wondered what it’s like to be a bat
- this question assumes that a bat has some kind of experience of being a bat
- what if being a bat is nothing at all?
- what if you didn’t have the self-awareness to even know you were a bat?
Panpsychism
Notion that all objects possess some level of conscious mind
Cartesian Dualism
Theatre of the mind -> lil man in your head (ex. characters from inside out)
Why is it difficult to study consciousness?
It’s not a physical thing, it’s meta-physical
Introspection
“Examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes”
- determines our mental contents but not aware of our processing
Introspection Illusion
Can’t trust your brain
Cognitive illusion that makes us think we have direct insight into our mental states
(ex. unconscious inference (Helmholtz)
Inattentional Blindness
Being unaware of our own levels of awareness
- the brain wants everything to make sense so it confabulates explanations of our actions
Anosognosia
Denial of illness (ex. paralyzed arm that they think is still moving)
What is the difference between automatic and controlled processing?
Automatic processing has been heavily practiced and therefore doesn’t require much attention at all
Controlled processing occurs when you are learning a new task or needing to pay more attention to something than you normally would (ex. driving in a rain storm)
Q: When Tara was learning how to knit, she had to pay attention to every stitch. Now she can knit while watching tv. Why can she knit now without giving it full attention?
Because it used to be controlled processing and now it is automatic
What are 3 ways of naturally altering waking consciousness?
Meditation, immersion in an action, hypnosis
Meditation
A mental procedure that focuses attention on an external object, an internal event, or a sense of awareness
2 types of meditation: Concentrative Meditation
focus attention on one thing (ex. breathing)
2 types of meditation: Mindfulness Meditation
letting thoughts flow freely and recognizing them but trying not to react to them
Q: Suppose a person meditating focuses on thoughts of waves rolling onto a beach. Is the person practicing concentrative or mindfulness meditation?
Concentrative
- focusing on a specific object
Q: What is flow?
- being fully engaged in an activity
- pure fascination
- may not have any other benefits then just making the person feel fulfilled and happy
- personal enjoyment
- completely forgetting about everything else and being “in the zone”
What are some examples of activities that typically result in flow
- sports
- listening to music
Hypnosis
A social interaction during which a person, responding to suggestions, experiences changes in memory, perception, and/or voluntary action
Q: Can everyone be hypnotized?
- depends on suggestibility
- related to personal qualities like being focused, imaginative, easily absorbed, and willing to participate
Circadian Rhythms
Biological patterns that occur at regular intervals as a function of time of day
Suprachiasmatic Nucleus
- Registers changes in light (day vs night)
Pineal Gland
- receives info from suprachiasmatic nucleus
- secretes melatonin in response
Melatonin
- hormone that travels through the blood stream
- affects receptors in the body including the brain
- enhances sleep
What supresses the production of melatonin?
- bright lights (daytime)
Why don’t you fall off your bed in the middle of the night?
- still somewhat aware of your surroundings (in case of danger)
What is the first stage of sleep?
- theta waves
- short, irregular waves of electrical activity in the brain called theta waves
- can easily be woken up and may forget they were ever asleep (ex. fire alarm)
- may feel sensations of falling or that your limbs are jerking
Second stage of sleep
- sleep spindles, k-complexes
- breathing becomes more regular
- less sensitive to external stimulation
- EEG will still show theta waves but sometimes there are bursts of activity called sleep spindles and large waves called K-complexes which shut the outside world and keep you asleep
What can trigger K-complexes and what happens to sleep spindles when people age?
- K-complexes can be affected by abrupt noises
- sleep spindles lessen
Stage 3 and 4
- delta waves
- often blended together because they are so similar
- large, regular brain patterns = delta waves
- often referred to as slow-wave sleep
- hard to wake these people up and when they do they’re probably disoriented
- can tune out noises like sirens but will still wake up to their baby crying because it is relevant to them
REM
- beta waves
- rapid eye movements
- after about 90 minutes of sleep the cycle reverses and goes back to stage 1
- paralysis of motor systems (otherwise you’d act out all your dreams)
- dreaming
REM atonia
sleep paralysis (when woken up during REM sleep)
How many times does the cycle typically repeat?
around 5
Q: What hormone promotes sleep and what structure in the brain secretes it?
Hormone: melatonin
Structure: pineal gland
Dreams
Products of an altered state of consciousness in which images and fantasies are confused with reality
Sigmund Freud: The Manifest Content of dreams
- dreams the way we remember them
- images and storylines
Sigmund Freud: The Latent Content of dreams
- actual symbolic meaning
- usually built on urges and desires
Hobson and McCarley: Activation-synthesis Hypothesis of dreaming
- main theory
- dreams = activity in the brain (random neural firing)
- brain tries to make sense of the activity
- blends it with stored memories
Ad Hoc Revisionism theory of dreams
Theory that stories get created once you wake up and your brain puts it all together in a way that makes sense
- this theory was created because a dude had a dream that timed up with when a book fell on his head and woke him up (guillotine in dream)
Q: Is a dream about folding and putting away laundry more likely to occur during REM sleep or non-REM sleep?
non-REM sleep because they are typically dreams about mundane tasks
- in REM sleep, dreams are typically bizarre
Restorative Theory of Sleep
- sleep allows the body to rest and repair itself (ex. sleep longer after physical exertion)
- allows the brain to replenish energy and strengthen the immune system
What are the 2 factors that maintain circadian rhythm
- endogenous rhythm
- free running rhythm
- uses melatonin to promote sleep schedules - entrainment
- light suppresses melatonin
- trains SCN to a light cycle
Infradian Rhythms
- biological rhythms that last longer than a day (ex. hibernation, menstrual cycle, etc.)
Ultradian Rhythms
- biological rhythms that happen more frequently everyday (ex. breathing, eating, performance, blinking, etc.)
Q: After an exhausting day helping your friend move into a new apartment, you sleep a great deal that night. Which theory of sleep does this behaviour support?
Restorative theory
Insomnia
A disorder characterized by an inability to sleep that causes significant problems in daily living
What are common causes of insomnia?
- worrying about being able to fall asleep
- can’t shut off their brain
- anxiety interferes with normal sleep patterns
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
A disorder where people stop breathing while asleep because their throat closes
- results in waking up many times in the night - often associated with obesity
Narcolepsy
A sleep disorder where people experience excessive sleepiness during normal waking hours, sometimes going limp and collapsing
Q: Suppose a person frequently has trouble falling asleep but is unbothered and functions well enough in daily life. Does this person have insomnia?
No because insomnia affects mental health and causes functional impairments to a person’s daily life
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
Impairment in mental functioning caused by a head injury
Q: How does unresponsive wakefulness syndrome differ from brain death?
people in a state of unresponsive wakefulness syndrome show some activity in regions of the brain and some abnormal brain function while people who are brain dead have no activity in any parts of their brain and it is irreversible
What do psychoactive drugs do
- act on the central nervous system
- affects thinking, behaviour, perception, emotion
How do psychoactive drugs (all of them) change brain neurochemistry
activating neurotransmitter systems either by imitating (ex. weed) or changing (ex. cocaine) the activity of certain neurotransmitters
What do stimulants do
- speed up the activity of the nervous system
- increase behavioural and mental activity
- typically enhancing wakefulness and alertness (ex. caffeine)
Stimulants:
What do depressants do
Decrease behavioural and mental activity
How do depressants change brain neurochemistry
- depressing the central nervous system
What do opioids (narcotics) do
Reduce the experience of pain, bring pleasure
How do opioids change neurochemistry
What do hallucinogens (psychedelics) do
Alter thoughts or perceptions
How do hallucinogens change neurochemistry
