Consciousness- Lecture 11 Flashcards
What is consciousness?
Definition: Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.
James (1890)
Exploring consciousness is like “trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks”
Access Consciousness
Information we use in thinking, speech or action
e.g. attention, priming, sleep
(fairly understood)
Phenomenal consciousness
Subjective in nature- experiential properties of a state
e.g. when we hear, see, smell, taste things
It is what these feel like to you
(majorly difficult to explain)
Dualism (Cartesian)
The physical world and subjective experience
>Mind and brain are two different entities that meet in the pineal gland
Implicit assumption of dualism
Mind influences the brain
>non-physical entity affecting a physical entity
»has been criticised
idealist solution to consciousness
Only things in our mind really exist, eliminating the need for the physical world to exist
The behaviourist solution to consciousness
Extreme opposite to idealism
- Mental states do not exist
- Notion of consciousness is meaningless
- All reaction to environment with no internal subjective intuition
The materialist solution
Mental states are equivalent to brain states
-mind and consciousness are by-products of material processes (the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system)
Consciousness and cognitive psychology
Studies complex processes: -Thinking -Attention Focuses on access consciousness mostly Often relies on participants phenomenal experience
Change blindness
When a new object/stimulus is introduced into individuals visual field, however goes unnoticed unless attention is directed towards it
Rensink et al. (1997)
CHANGE BLINDNESS
Spot the difference- with brief blank screen between
»>Focused attention is necessary to see change
Simons and Chabris (1999)
In-attentional Blindness
Due to involvement of other attentional resources, we may miss obvious events
>e.g., in a crowded film theatre, we miss friends waving at us
Posner (1980)
Spotlight attention
Supports in-attentional blindness- we have selective attention, where a small amount of info from environment is processes and limited amount outside of this is processed
Studies on Magic
Magic is misdirected attention
Linking Attention to consciousness
Where attention is not focused, is our unconscious and when attention is permitted is our conscious
Consciously carrying out something –> we have diverted our attention to it
Subliminal Persuasion
Unconsciously persuading individuals to carry out a task
Subliminal messages- something that unconsciously may influence someone to act
Vicary (1950s)
Can unconsciously influence someone to buy products:
>Flashing very short messages every 5s between something they are paying attention to
-e.g. drink coke
McConell et al (1958)
No proof that subliminal advertising is effective despite claims in commercial world- ‘boosting sales’
Moore (1996)
Evidence of subliminal persuasion in modern life:
Disney accused of inserted subliminal messages into films
Subliminal Priming
Subliminal stimuli may influence our cognitive processes in the short term in the form of priming
Bar and Biederman (1998)
Empirical evidence for subliminal priming
First demonstration of facilitatory visual recognition priming by unidentified pictures
Dehaene et al (1998)
Ptps had to identify if the target digit > or < 5
-Presented with another priming digit (in letters) briefly shown before
Participants were faster when the subliminal and target digits were congruent
Automaticity
Automated actions: >fast >require little attention >unavailable to consciousness >practice leads to automated actions
