Consciousness Flashcards
what is self-consciousness a representation of
» the bodily self
» the self as the subject of experiences
» the self as “owner” of actions and intentions (sense of agency).
what is phenomenal awareness
i.e. subjective experience: the “feel” of private sensory experience (sensory “qualia”), inner thoughts and feelings, action intentions: what it is like to be you (or a bat).
what do Neuropsychological disorders of self-consciousness include
- Anasagnosias
- anarchic hand
- alien hand
- psychotic auditory hallucinations
what is anasagnosias
not acknowledging major and frank cognitive disorders – e.g. Anton’s syndrome
• They are blind but convinced that they are not
what is anarchic hand
loss of awareness of ownership of intentions
what is alien hand
loss of awareness of ownership of body part
what are » Psychotic auditory hallucinations
loss of awareness of intention/ownership of internal speech? (Frith, 1992)
explain Semantic processing of subliminal words demonstrated by priming of response to visible target
Semantic priming obtained from backward-masked words with prime duration at which presence of word cannot be discriminated (Marcel, 1983)
• Similarly: masked category priming of pictures, words, faces, etc.
» E.g if must classify gender of face, a different subliminal prime face of the same/opposite gender facilitates/interferes.
how does activation of meaning by unattended objects work
Unattended words outside focal attention: not noticed or remembered, but undergo some (attenuated) semantic processing (e.g. GSR to shock conditioned words in unattended message).
What was Bargh’s experiment of priming to behaviour
• Participants believing they were in a language experiment assembled into sentences
» words associated with age or
» control words
• Walking speed down corridor slower after priming with age-related words!
what was found about patients with a hemianopia
- Patients with a hemianopia (or more restricted scotoma) — area of blindness in the visual field due to cortical (V1) damage — have no conscious awareness of stimuli in the blind region
- But — if forced to guess — can voluntarily point at a moving object within the blind region, and make some discriminations of them (e.g. form, colour), much better than chance
when does awareness of intention happen relative to initiation of action?
• Libet’s (1983) ERP paradigm:
» P raises finger when they feel like it
» And judges (by noting position of rotating clock hand) the moment W at which they consciously initiated action
• “Readiness-potential” onset substantially precedes judged moment of intention to act.
• Same is true for (briefer) “lateralised readiness potential” (LRP) associated with selection of left versus right response
– awareness follows (∴ caused by) response selection?
(Haggard and Eimer, 1999; see Haggard, 2005 TICS)
how is choice blindness investigated
• E shows P photos of two faces
• E asks P to choose the face preferred, appears to passes it face down to P
(but by sleight of hand on some trials E substitutes the other photo).
• E asks P to explain why they preferred the face they now hold and look at
- ~80% did not notice the manipulation
- And happily gave reasons for a “choice” they didn’t make!
• There is increasing acceptance (Lect 14) that decision-making and reasoning may be done by two routes:
» Step-by-step (serial) logical reasoning (conscious) [System 2]
» Intuition (automatic memory-based – unconscious) [System 1]
what is The “unconscious thought advantage” (Dijksterhuis et al Science, 2006, 311,1005-7)
• P chose among 4 cars on the basis of a description of 4 or 12 attributes per car (e.g. good mileage, poor handling, large boot, etc.). One car had 75% +ve attributes, two 50%, one 25%
• Conscious thought condition (3 mins deliberation),
vs
• Unconscious thought condition (same amount of time)
(e.g. word-search, anagram solving requiring concentration on that task)
• For 12 attributes (but not 4) better choices after unconcious condition
