Consciousness Flashcards
What is consciousness?
a state of awareness of sensations or ideas so that you can reflect on tehm, and report them to toehrs
How can we study consciousness?
by considering processes of which we are not conscious fo
What is blind sight?
results form damage to visual cortex, cannot see objects but can “guess” the location pretty accurately, reach for them, adn describe them
What is subliminal perception?
people can be influenced by visual inputs they didn’t consciously perceive
What is evidence for subliminal perception?
Evidence for subliminal perception comes from studies of the N400
brain wave, surprise signal from brain
What areas of brain contribute to your overall alterness/sensitivity?
thalamus and reticular activating system
What is the cognitive unconscious?
mental activities outisde of your awareness that make your interactions with the world possible
In terms of cognition what are we generally aware/not aware of?
aware of products but not processes
What is an example of a product vs process?
product: memory of a nice dinner
process: inferences, retrieval, reconstruction
Can people reason unconsciously?
yes
Can your conscious inner dialogue be influenced by the cognitive unconscious? Example?
yes
framing effect
What are our unconscious judgements/inferences like?
fast, efficient, reasonable
What are our unconscious judgemnets/inferences guided by?
situtational cues, prior habits, familiarity
What are action slips?
cases where you do something differently than your intended to (accidently do something that you are used to doing)
Are unconscious processes flexible?
generally no
How can unconscious processes happen without supervision?
biological (built into nervous system), or practiced (become automated)
What does executive control require?
output side (to initiate or overide actions), way to represent goals/agenda, input side
What are metacognitive skills?
skills in monitoring/controlling your own mental processes
What is metamemory?
knowledge and beliefs about, awareness of, and control over one’s own memory
What is the global neuronal workspace hypothesis?
workspace neurons link the activity of various specialized brain areas, integrates and makes single coherent representations possible
How does the global neuronal workspace work?
Workspace neurons carry different info and compete for attention, whatever we pay attention to wins (sustained/broad/focused attention will affect this)
What is access consciousness?
your sensitivity and access to certain types of info
What is phenomenal consciousness?
what it feels like to have certain expereinces
What is qualia?
one’s subjective experiences that cannot be conveyed as a first-person experience to someone else (pain of headache etc)
