Consciousness Chapter 5 Flashcards
- why is regaining consciousness during surgey bad
can spike blood pressure heart rate etc
- Define consciousness
a person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind - EXPERIENCE focus - Posner and Snyder
- circadian rhythm study
Recht/Lewt/Schwartz - teams flying east perform worse
- explain sleep spindles study
Dang-Vu - spindle rate predicts sleep stability - high spindle rate is good
- controlled processes
require alert awareness so limit attention and take away from other processes
- automatic processes
little attention so they don’t interfere
- check brain waves note
do it
- Challenge in psychology
trying to make sense of subjects not just objects
- phenomenology
how things seem to the conscious person
- beta wave frequency and mood
15 to 30 cps - normal alert state
- alpha wave frequency and mood
8-12 cps - relaxation
- theta wave frequency and mood
4-7 cps - light sleep
- delta wave frequency
<4 cps deep sleep
- define Problem of Other Minds
the fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others
- 2 consequences of problem of other minds
1 zombies - ppl could just be saying things (zombies might exist) 2 can’t tell if others’ experience is like yours
- Ppl judge minds for these 2 factors
1 experience 2 agency
- 4 ratings of agency/experience in dogs to ppl minds
1 none of each 2 experience > agency 3 both 4 agency > experience ie God - so Everyone knows minds have EXPERIENCES that lead to ACTION
- one solution to other minds problem
behaviourism (only studying behaviour) - doesnt account for language etc recall - so modern psyc studies mind
- Descartes and soul
17th century - thought soul was in pinneal gland @ center of brain - really an endocrine gland so obvs not
- mind-body problem
issue of how the mind is related to the brain and body - “mind is what the brain does” today
- what Descartes was right about
reconciling physical body with the mind - today patterns of neuron activity can be shown repeated for the same stimulus
- brain/though/action relationship
brain precedes conscious mind - electrical patterns fire up half second before voluntary thinking/ action
- explain nature of consciousness
4 properties: intentionality/unity/selectivity/transience - different levels - a range of contents
- intentionality
consciousness directed toward an object - its always about something - limited attention
- unity
resistance to division so info from all body senses is integrated - by brain
- selectivity
capacity to include some objects but not others
- dichotic listening + significance
people wearing headphones hear different messages in each ear - filters out some info but tunes in some info ie woman to man change - most inclined to select info of special interest
- cocktail-party phenomenon + example
people tune in one message while they filter out others nearby - ie more likely to notice own name being spoken
- when can selectivity occur
in all the states ie sleeping - waking someone with name works better
- transcience + metaphor for it
tendency to change - mind wanders from present to present to present - “stream of conciousness” metaphor coined by William James - (Ulysess book an example)
- Necker cube
conciousness flows inevitably ie different perspectives of the cube - ppl reverse it regulary ie 3 secs
- minimal consciousness
low level sensory awareness - mind inputs sensations/may output behaviour ie turning towards sun even plants do it
- full consciousness
know and are able to report your mental state - ie when you realize pain in your leg not just rubbing it ie dring without thinking
- self consciousness
person’s attention is drawn tot the self as an object (William James described) - ie when you’re group focus/ camera trained on you/ intropection
- Mirrors and self-consciousness
avoid when ashamed - chronic = depression - OR analyzing self can make more civilized for a moment
- explain animal mirror relationship
most dont recognize - chimps do ie brushing red pigment of self when seeing it in mirror - human infants dont recognize until 18 months
- experience sampling technique + concs
systematic approach to thinking aloud - promted to record at random times of the day - shows consciousness dominated by immediate environment
- current concerns
what the person is thinking about repeatedly - real concerns can differ from reports
- Skin conductance level
measure emotional responses - show subjects can get emotional when they are topics of curren concern
- positive affect study results
lowest affect when commuting/ working - also childcare even though they __want__ to have positiv kid time
- daydreaming
purposeless flow of thoughts comes to mind
- daydreaming fMRI study
daydreaming (or not busy state) uses default network - this brain patterns for social life etc
- mental control
attempt to change conscious states of mind
- thought supression
conscious avoidance of a thought
- thought supression study
white bear Dostoyevsky - Wegner study not supression = less times thinking about bear
- rebound effect of thought supression
thought returns with greater frequency following supression
- ironic monitor
ie people trying to be happy get sad
- ironic processes of mental control
ironic errors bedcause process that monitors errors can itself produce them - not present in consciousness - as works in background: increases sensity to unwanted though = BOOM its there
- frequency of mind wandering
50% of day - at least 30% in each activity
- happiness and mind wandering
LESS HAPPY when wandering
- wandering + creativity
creative problem solving occurs when mind wanders ie Einstein breaks through while walking
- Is process of thinking conscious?
no - just results - your not even allowed to be aware of thinking process
- structural psychologists and thought
ie Wilhelm Wundt - could not report the actual thinking - drew a blank
- dynamic unconscious
described by Freud - active system encompassing lifetime of hidden memories - deepests instincts/desires and struggle to control these forces
- repression
Freuds theory of what holds unconscious desires in check - removes unacceptable thoughts from conscious and puts them in the unconscious
- Freudian slips
Freud’s evidence of unconscious in speech errors ie Fox News sez Obama bin Laden - maybe what was going through their head - also ie shad bock turns to bad shock reading when warned of shock
- why is Freud not as influential today
he relied on interpreting past events - science focus is using hypothesis tests to predict future based on evidence
- modern view cognitive unconscious
factory that builds concious thought and behaviour - all mental processes that given rise to these even though they’re not in conscious experience
- subliminal perception
thought/behaviour influenced by stimuli that person cannot consciously report as perceiving ie James Vicary movie theatre “Eat Popcorn” hoax
- subliminal perception experiment
presented words to do with aging in a series of words - not sublimal just noticeably - subjects exposed walked slower!
- mental butler view of unconscious
takes over tedious tasks - not that smart ie subliminal enemy loses registers negative connotation not positive that enemy has lost - doesnt join the words together
- unconscious decision
better able to sort out complex info ie choosing roomate unconsciously while playing game = good result
- altered state of consciousness
form of experereince departs significantly from normal subjective experience of world/mind - in dreams
- circadian rhythm
naturally occuring 24 hour cycle - circa=about dies=day - 25.1 hrs has beentested as actual
- first EEG recordings
1929
- these waves alternate in waking hours
beta waves (high frequency alertness) // alpha waves (low freq relaxation)
- list 5 sleep stages
1 theta waves (below alpha) 2 sleep spinds & K complexes (activity bursts - hard to awaken) 3/4 delta waves (slow wave sleep) 5 REM
- REM sleep
a stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements - high level of brain activity - pulse quickens - sexual arousal - very still