Chapter 5: Consciousness Flashcards
Consciousness
A person’s inner experience.
A person’s subjective experience of the world and of the mind.
Experience.
Phenomenology
Psychologists hope to understand the subjective experience of people, to understand what it is like to human.
How things seem to the conscious person.
Problem of other minds
Difficulty in perceiving the consciousness of others.
We can’t tell if someone is consciousness are not easily.
Not able to know if someone is experience an inner experience.
No way to tell if someone’s experience is anything like mine.
We assume that other’s minds, inner experiences are similar to their own, but we can’t tell if that is true.
Problem of other minds: Agency
People judge how other’s consciousness (inner experience) is like based on agency and experience.
Agency: The ability of self-control, planning, memory, or thought.
Problem of other minds: Experience
Experience: The ability to to feel pain, pleasure, hunger, anger, fear, awareness.
Mind-body problem
The mystery (issue) of how the mind is related to the brain and body.
- René Descartes proposed that the human body is physical matter and human mind is seperate of thinking matter.
- Psychologists assume that thinking causes neural activity in the brain.
- Some studies show that brain activities happen before the activities of the conscious mind.
Artificial Intelligence
The study and use of of machines that can independently operate in ways that mimic human intelligence and interactions.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Intentionality
Intentionality: Consciousness is focused on one object (a small part) of all the information that is going on around us (sights, sounds, feelings etc).
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Unity
Unity: Consciousness integrates information from all of the body’s senses (of all different stimuli) into one coherent whole.
Puts all the enormous amount of information into one unified consciousness/ experience.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Selectivity
Consciousness filters out information and tunes into other information.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Selectivity: Dichotic listening
Dichotic listening: People wearing headphones hear different messages in each ear.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Selectivity: Cocktail-party phenomenon
Cocktail-party phenomenon: People tuning into one message (conversation) while filtering out others nearby.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Transcience
Transcience: The tendency for consciousness to change from one “right now” to the next: A constantly changing stream of consciousness since humans can hold only to a limited amount of information at the same time consciously, so when we select more information, some of what is currently there must disappear.
Out focus of attention keeps changing.
Levels of Consciousness: Minimal consciousness
Minimal consciousness: A low-level of sensory awareness and responsiveness to it, the mind inputs sensory information and may output behaviour.
The mind registers that sensory information (like a poke), and may respond by a behaviour, but the person may not be aware of having had that experience.
Levels of Consciousness: Full consciousness
Full consciousness: Being aware of experiencing an experience. Being able to report one’s own particular mental state.
Levels of Consciousness: Self-consciousness
Self-consciousness: Specific level of consciousness in which a person’s attention is seeing oneself as an object.
Coma
Seem completely unaware.
Vegetative state
No evidence exists that patients are aware of themselves of their surroundings, although they may appear “awake” through their actions (which are random).
Locked-in syndrome
A rare condition in which patients are fully aware but not able to demonstrate it because they cannot voluntarily move their muscles.
10 to 40 people who are deemed to not be conscious (in a vegetative state) turn out to be conscious in some degree.
Experience-sampling/ Ecological momentary assessment (EMA)
Technique to learn what is one people’s minds by asking them by asking people to report on their conscious experiences at specific times.
Experience-sampling is increasingly being used to study what it is like to be human by focusing on a range of different aspects of conscious experiences. (Ex. Asking when someone feels bored during the day, to understand what activities make people the most bored).
Daydreaming
A state of consciousness where a purposeless flow of thoughts come to mind.
Being in a daydreaming state (when someone isn’t down a mental activity) shows activity in the default network.
Mental control
Attempt to change one’s conscious state of mind to another.
Thought suppression
Trying to avoid a thought in one’s mind.
Rebound effect of thought suppression
The tendency of a thought to return to consciousness with greater frequency after trying to suppress it.
Ironic process of mental control:
A mental process that causes errors that one is trying not to make happen because thinking of avoiding these errors actually causes them.
Focusing on not wanting something to happen causes it to happen.
Dynamic unconscious
Freud’s view that the subconscious mind is a system that stores all memories, a person’s deep desires, animalistic desires, and a person’s inner struggle to control them.
Repression
The unconscious is controlled, “held back” from expressing itself by the something Freud called the repression: A mental process that removes unacceptable thoughts and memories from consciousness and keeps them in the unconscious.
Cognitive unconscious
A fast, automatic information processor that give rise/ influence’s to a person’s thoughts, feeling and behaviors.
Dual-process theories:
System 1
System 2
Suggest that humans have 2 different ways of processing information that draw on different neural pathways.
System 1: Unconscious mind, fast, automatic, used for easy tasks.
System 2: Conscious mind, slow, for complex tasks.
System 2 uses information from System 1 to help guide future behavior when there’s something unexpected that happens.
Altered state of consciousness
An experience that is different from the normal subjective experience of life.
Hypnagogic state
Pre-sleep consciousness where task-oriented thoughts are replaced by wandering thoughts and images.
Hypnic jerk
A sudden sensation of dropping while sleeping.
Hypnopompic state
Post-sleep consciousness where waking consciousness comes back in a foggy and imprecise way.
Circadian Rhythm
A naturally occuring 24 hour cycle of sleep and waking.
EGG Pattern During Stages of Sleep: Awake
Beta waves: High-frequency electrical activity in the brain.
EGG Pattern During Stages of Sleep: Relaxation
Alpha waves: Lower frequency electrical activity in the brain than beta waves.
Stage 1 of Sleep
Theta waves
Stage 2 of Sleep
Theta waves with sleep spindles and K complexes.
Sleeper becomes difficult to awaken.
REM: Rapid Eye Movement
Rapid eye movement and high-frequency sawtooth waves, similar to beta waves (while awake).
One cycle between REM and slow-wave deep stages every 90 minutes. Lighter sleep and REM periods lasts longer during later stages of sleep.
Electrooculograph (EOG)
An instrument that measures eye movement.
Sleep Deprivation symptoms:
Reduces mental acuity. Reduces reaction time. Increases irritability. Increases depression. Increases the risk of accidents and injury.
Deprivation from REM sleep:
- Memory problems
- Excessive aggression
Deprivation from Slow-Wave sleep:
- Feeling tired.
- Feeling fatigued.
- Hypersensitive to muscle and bone pain.
Sleep Disorders: Insomnia
Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.
Sleep Disorders: Sleep apnea
Disorder where a person stops breathing for brief periods while sleeping.
Sleep Disorders: Somnambulism/ Sleepwalking
When a person arises and walks around while asleep.
- Peaking between ages 4 and 8 years old.
- Usually during slow-wave sleep.
Sleep Disorders: Narcolepsy
A disorder where sudden sleep attacks occur in the middle of waking activities.
Intrusion of a dreaming state of sleep with REM into waking.
Sleep attacks last about 30 seconds to 30 minutes.
Genetic basis.
Sleep Disorders: Sleep paralysis
The experience of waking up and being unable to move.
Sleep Disorders: Night terrors (or sleep terrors):
Abrupt awakenings with panic and intense emotional arousal.
Dream Consciousness: Five characteristics that make dream consciousness different than waking consciousness.
- We feel emotions intensely.
- Dream is illogical.
- Sensation is fully formed and meaningful, and visual sensation is dominant.
- Dreaming and its events are accepted as perfectly normal: uncritical acceptance.
- Difficulty remembering dreams after the dream is over. Dreaming memory is very bad.
Freud’s View that Dreams have Meaning: Manifest content:
A dream’s superficial meaning.
Freud’s View that Dreams have Meaning: Latent content:
A dream’s true (hard to find the correct one, since there are infinite possibilities of a dream’s true meaning) underlying meaning.
Activation-synthesis model:
Dreams are the brains attempt to make sense of the random neural activity that occurs during sleep. The brain continues interpreting information and its interpretive mechanisms can run free since it doesn’t external sensation to make sense of it.
Drugs and Consciousness: Psychoactive drugs:
Drugs that change consciousness and behavior by altering the brain’s neurotransmission system.
Drug tolerance
The tendency for larger drug doses to be required over time to achieve the same effect.
Physical dependence
Continuing to use a drug to prevent the physical withdrawals (ex. pain, convulsions).
Psychological dependence
A strong desire to return to the drug even when physical withdrawal symptons are gone.
An emotional need for a drug after physical withdrawal symptons are gonee.
Depressants
Substances that reduce the activities of the central nervous system (inhibiting neural transmisson).
Sedative and calming effect.
Can produce physical and psychological dependence.
Ex. Alcohol
Alcohol and different resulting behaviours theories: Expectancy theory
Alcohol behaviour effects can be produced by people’s expectations of how it will influence them.
Alcohol and different resulting behaviours theories: Alcohol myopia
Alcohol decreases attention (and judgement) leading people to respond is simple ways to complex situations.
Balanced placebo design:
The mere belief that one has experienced the actual stimulus, when one hasn’t, causes the behaviour as if the person did experience it.
Stimulants:
Substances that excites the central nervous system (increases neutrotransmission activities) increasing altertness and energy.
Stimulants increase the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, thus increasing alterness and energy.
Narcotics/ opiates:
Highly addicitive drugs that relieve pain and are derived from opium.
Hallucinogens:
Alters the experience of sensation and perception and often causes visual and auditory hallucinations.
Marijuana:
A plant whose leaves and buds contain a psychoactive drug called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).
Mildly hallucinogenic.
Getaway drug:
A drug that increases the chance of using other harmful drugs in the future.
Hypnosis:
A social interaction where one person (the hypnotist) makes suggestions that changes the subjective experience of the participant.
Posthypnotic amnesia:
Where someone loses specific memories following hypnotic suggestions to forget.
Hypnotic analgesia:
The reduction of pain by hypnosis in people who are susceptible to hypnosis.
