Defining and Studying Consciousness Flashcards
Define consciousness.
The moment-by-moment awareness of the external environment as well as one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
What does introspect mean?
The process of examining one’s own internal thoughts and feelings.
What is metacognition?
The ability to think about your own thinking.
What are the two key aspects of consciousness and what do they mean?
The first one is arousal, which means a person’s level of wakefulness or alertness. The second one is awareness.
What is selective attention?
The act of focusing one’s awareness onto a particular aspect of one’s experience, to the exclusion of everything else.
What is inattentional blindness?
A failure to perceive information that is outside the focus of one’s attention.
What is change blindness?
A form of inattentional blindness, in which a person fails to notice changes in a visual stimulus.
What is automaticity?
The ability to perform a task without conscious awareness or attention.
What is cognitive unconscious?
The various mental processes that support everyday functioning without conscious awareness or control.
What is subliminal perception?
A form of perception that occurs without conscious awareness.
What is the default mode network?
An interconnected system of brain regions that are active when the mind is alert and aware but not focused on any particular task, such as during mind wandering.
What is the global workspace hypothesis?
The hypothesis that conscious awareness arises from synchronized activity, from across various brain regions, that is integrated into coherent representations of an experience.
What is circadian rhythm?
A regular, 24-hour pattern of bodily arousal. Also known as the biological rhythm or biological clock.
What are beta waves?
A rhythmic pattern of high-frequency, low-amplitude waves in the brain’s electrical activity (as measured by EEG) that is associated with being awake and actively thinking.
What are alpha waves?
A rhythmic pattern of low-frequency, high-amplitude waves in the brain’s electrical activity (as measured by EEG) that is associated with being awake yet relaxed with the eyes closed.
What are delta waves?
A rhythmic pattern of very low-frequency, high-amplitude waves in the brain’s electrical activity (as measured by EEG) that is associated with deep, Stage 4 sleep.
What is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep?
A stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements, brain activity similar to wakefulness, faster heart and breathing rates, inability to move the skeletal muscles, and dreams.
What is unihemispheric sleep?
A pattern of sleep in which only one half (or hemisphere) of the brain experiences slow-wave sleep at a time, while the other half remains awake.
What is REM rebound?
The tendency to spend more time in REM sleep of deprived of it on previous nights.
What is the activation synthesis hypothesis?
The hypothesis that dreams result from the brain’s attempt to organize the chaotic patterns of brain activity during sleep into a semicoherent narrative.
What is REM behavior disorder? (RBD)
A sleep disorder that involves acting out one’s dreams because the paralysis that normally occurs during REM sleep is absent or incomplete.
What are psychoactive drugs?
Chemical substances that alter a person’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors by influencing the activity of neurotransmitters in the nervous system.
What is drug tolerance?
The diminished response to a drug that results from prolonged use, leading the drug user to require larger doses to achieve the same original effect.
