Chapter 6 - States of Consciousness Flashcards
What is consciousness ?
- Study of consciousness – Rooted in philo + psych
Direct relationship between the workings of the brain & the experience of thinking, feeling, and acting
Ingestion of drugs can alter subjective awareness, bump on the head can drastically alter personality
Paradoxically, although a tremendous amount of processing must be completed to create a conscious perception of the world, there is no “feeling” of the work involved
Dualism – Idea that the mind & body are fundamentally different entities
Split - Brain Phenomenon
Surgery involving cutting through corpus callosum (large band of axons connecting both hemispheres) to reduce seizures in people suffering with epilepsy
Hemispheric specialization – Hemispheres have different functions
2 hemispheres unable to share info
RH cannot use language (Temporal lobe in LH)
Left side of body begins to act “on its own”
e.g. Patients shown an image of a cat (or the word cat) in right visual field, this message would travel to the left visual cortex → left temporal lobe → respond that they saw a cat. Vice versa, message never arrives at the “language” portion of the brain
If patients are asked to draw the image with their left hand (controlled by the RH), they are easily able to re-create the image BUT wont know why
e.g. Asking a patient to get a drink of water in the left ear will result in them following the command, despite having no idea why
Conscious Experience
Dan Dennett, Philosopher – Conscious awareness based on perception, but our experiences work like perception— we form an impression of the world in a way that is useful
He will go through several examples that illustrate how our experience of the world can be influenced by suggestions, ambiguity, and state of mind.
Argues consciousness is result of several processes in the brain that can operate independently & interact with one another depending on what the task demands
Challenges in studying consciousness : Subjective experience of our own existence
2 Components of Conscious Experience
2 components of conscious experience :
Conscious content – Subjective experiences of your internal & external world
“Sense of self,” your plans, dreams, day-to-day perception of space and time
Awareness
Without awareness, your heart continues to beat, and you continue to blink without needing to execute explicit conscious commands to make them occur
States of consciousness – Different levels of arousal and attention
Your experience of particular state of consciousness is based on several processes.
influenced by factors beyond your “control.”
e.g. time flying when having fun
William James (1890) discussed this in his textbook Principles of Psychology, remarking that “my experience is what I agree to attend to”
Conscious content heavily dependent on state of consciousness
Attention
Process of selecting information from the internal & external environments to prioritize for processing
- Passive, Active
Passive Attention
Involuntary OR automatic, occurs when bottom-up info from external environment requires a response
e.g. When you hear a loud noise in a quiet room, it is likely that you will immediately stop what you are doing and search for the source of the noise.
Active Attention
When attention is directed by goals and top-down processing, requires effort
e.g. When you search a cluttered table for your keys
Some features of the environment are noticed readily and effortlessly while others can be missed
What is noticed depends on the goals, experiences, and state of mind of the individual
In the lab, under controlled conditions, attention is often directed based on the instructions given by the experimenter
Selective (Focused) Attention
Occurs when you attend to 1 source of information while simultaneously ignoring other stimuli
Some features of the environment necessarily more important + relevant than others
e.g. Stimuli that predict or are associated with threat
Some more noticeable based on their qualities
Stimulus salience – Low-level properties, bottom-up qualities of a scene influencing how we direct attention (e.g. color, font, loudness)
Attentional capture – When attention is diverted because of the salience of a stimulus
Top-down processing also plays role (needed prior experience)
As we develop expertise in a given area, we are better able to allocate attention to more
important features of the scene / ignore less relevant info (e.g. coaches, doctors)
Less conscious attention as we become more proficient at a skill
e.g. Focusing on road while driving or listening to a single conversation in a loud room
Even when some info not part of conscious awareness, still being processed
e.g. If someone yelled your name at party, you would reorient your attention to respond
Cocktail Party Effect
Loud room, even though several people are talking and there is noise you can block all of this out + listen to a convo you are having with another person
Dichotic Listening Task
Participants are asked to wear a pair of headphones that will play one message in one ear and a second, different, message in the other. Participants are asked to attend to + repeat one message, ignore the second. Participants generally have very little trouble completing this task. Have a fair amount of difficulty reporting details of what occurred in the unattended ear
Can notice + remember specific info such as if a male speaker changes to a female speaker in the unattended ear
Corteen & Wood (1972) Experiment
Researchers presented list of cities to participants followed by a mild but uncomfortable electric shock → people learn that the city name means something unpleasant is coming. Participants were then asked to complete a dichotic listening task : message to unattended ear included names of the cities paired with shock + new cities, other nouns. While participants were listening to the recordings, galvanic skin response (GSR - measure of arousal level of symp NS, responds when you hear something startling / emotionally engaging) measurements were also taken. When city names that had been paired with shock were presented to unattended ear, participants exhibited a response on 38% of the trials. City names that had not been paired with shock created a response 23% of the time, and unrelated words on only 10% of the trials. Although the participants were not consciously aware of what had played in the unattended ear, data suggest that the information was processed by the auditory system and identified as meaningful at least some of the time.
Divided Attention
Divided attention (Multitasking) : When we simultaneously attend to 2 or more tasks at once
e.g. Talking with a friend in the car about your class while driving
Not particularly proficient at multitasking and often make errors.
Experience contributes to your ability to multitask
As you become particularly well skilled at a task → becomes automatic (without awareness)
Not impaired by other tasks, fast / effortless processing
Once skill becomes automatic, it frees up attention to focus on other features of the environment
Predictability – Some automatic tasks far more predictable than others
Typing predictable
Walking down a city street are less predictable (tripping)
Consequences –
Mistyping vs Injury
Rosenbloom (2006) – Observed driving performance under two conditions :
1. Observations were made while participant was driving without cell phone
2. All participants received a call on a hands-free phone, and their driving was monitored
- When engaged in calls, participants left smaller distance between their own cars and the ones in front of them & more likely to increase their speed
- Most drivers were unaware that their driving had changed.
- Drivers make significantly more errors and are far more likely to miss important information when engaged in cell phone conversations
Inattentional Blindness & Change Detection
Occurs when we are engaged in one task and completely miss other information, can be caused when task is complex
Can also be possible to experience difficulty noticing even when actively looking for a specific stimulus
e.g. Dan Dennett, Flicker task – Participants shown 2 variations of the same picture, usually with one difference between the images. The first image is presented briefly (e.g., 250 milliseconds) → white screen → shown the 2nd version of image → another white screen. Despite the fact that participants know that a change is going to occur, it is not uncommon for participants to require a rather substantial amount of time to locate it
Intentional Change Detection
Flicker task, participants aware that a change will occur and are actively using selective attention to find it
People far quicker at identifying changes to animate stimuli compared to inanimate stimuli
Objects that don’t belong in a scene, like a fire hydrant in the living room, are noticed quickly
Movie continuity errors
