Consciousness

Question 1

Waking consciousness

Answer 1

Our awareness of ourselves and our environment

Question 2

selective attention

Answer 2

Even when we’re fully conscious, there’s a ton we are not aware of

Question 3

cocktail party effect

Answer 3

Your ability to attend only one voice among many

Question 4

change blindness

Answer 4

Failing to notice changes in the environment when our attention is focused on something else

Question 5

daydreaming

Answer 5

• The spontaneous activity of recalling or imagining personal or vicarious experiences
• Altered state of consciousness - less aware of your external environment
• Not constrained by reality

Question 6

reasons why we daydream

Answer 6

• Helps with decision making
  
  • Imagining the future or reflecting on mistakes of the past
• Supports creativity
  
  • Can think of new solutions to old problems
• Regulates our emotions
• Supports mental health, relationship health, productivity at work

Question 7

types of daydreams

Answer 7

• Rationalization - generates reasons why an unsatisfactory real life outcome is actually satisfactory to the daydreamer
• Revenge - imagines retaliation to the daydreamer
• Failure/success reversal
  
  • Failure: imagined scenarios where real life failures are prevented
  • Success: imagined scenarios where real life success were failures
• Preparation - generating hypothetical future scenarios

Question 8

Ways that daydreams differ from reality/waking consciousness

Answer 8

Four things you can manipulate:

• You can change the behavior of others
• You can change your self attributes
• You are not bound by physical constraints
• You are not bound by social constraints

Question 9

Why do we sleep?

Answer 9

• Helps us recuperate physically and mentally
  
  • Body tissue and neural pathways are repaired during sleep
• Helps us grow
  
  • Pituitary gland releases growth hormones while we sleep
  • Part of the reason adults need less sleep than babies

Question 10

What happens when we don’t sleep?

Answer 10

• We feel lousy
• Lose our ability to concentrate
• Memory is impaired
• Immune system is weakened

Question 11

circadian rhythm

Answer 11

• Natural 24 hour cycle that causes our sleep-wake patterns
• Influenced by pineal gland which releases melatonin
• Modern society (artificial lighting) messes this up
  
  • Now closer to 25 hours

Question 12

Sleep stage 1

Answer 12

• Very short (seconds)
• Have “hallucinations”
• Not always clear that you have fallen asleep

Question 13

Sleep stage 2

Answer 13

• About 20 minutes
• Sleep talking occurs most often here
• Clearly asleep, but fairly easily awoken

Question 14

Sleep stage 3+4

Answer 14

• About 30 minutes (together)
• Increasing number of delta waves
  
  • Brain activity slows down
• Very hard to wake up
• When most sleep walking occurs
• Most physically restorative state of sleep

Question 15

REM sleep

Answer 15

• About 10 minutes
• Brain appears “awake” (lots of neurological activity)
• Dreaming
• Body is paralyzed
• Paradoxical sleep
• Most mentally restorative state
• Critically important

Question 16

dreaming

Answer 16

A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind

Question 17

narcolepsy

Answer 17

• Uncontrollable sleep attacks
• The sufferer may lapse directly into REM sleep, often at inopportune times
• Usually lasts less than 5 minutes

Question 18

insomnia

Answer 18

• Recurring problems in falling asleep or staying asleep

Question 19

sleep apnea

Answer 19

• Temporarily stop breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakening
• Wake up enough to snort in air for a few seconds
• Often no recall of episodes
• Associated with obesity

Question 20

night terrors

Answer 20

• High arousal and an appearance of being terrified
• Target mostly children, who may sit up or walk around, talk incoherently, increased heart/breathing rate
• Occur during stage 4 sleep within 2-3 hours of falling asleep
• Rarely remembered

Question 21

sleep walking

Answer 21

• Most common in children
• Stage 4 sleep
• Harmless and unrecalled

Question 22

hypnosis

Answer 22

A social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur

Question 23

dissociation

Answer 23

• A split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others

Question 24

hypnosis as a social phenomenon

Answer 24

• Hypnotic phenomena are an extension of everyday social behavior and not something unique to hypnosis
• “The hypnotist’s ideas become the subject’s thoughts”
• “The subject’s thoughts produce the hypnotic experiences and behaviors”
• Extension of everyday everyday social behavior

Question 25

hypnosis as divided consciousness

Answer 25

• Distinctive brain activity
• Dissociation - split between different levels of consciousness
• Selective attention
• Info processing is divided into simultaneous conscious and unconscious realms
• Lower arm into ice bath, hypnosis dissociates the sensation of pain stimulus from the emotional suffering that defines their experience of pain (feels cold but not painful)

Question 26

meditation

Answer 26

A set of techniques that are intended to encourage a heightened state of awareness and focused attention