illusions and consciousness Flashcards
what is consciousness?
our moment to moment awareness of ourselves and the environment
what are the four characteristics of conscious?
subjective
private
self-reflective
dynamic
what is subjective conscious?
personal to you
what is private conscious?
others cannot ever directly or completely access your reality/conscious experience
what is self-reflective conscious?
mind is aware of own consciousness
what is dynamic conscious?
state of consciousness is frequently shifting and changing
what are states of consciousness?
a particular pattern of subjective experiences, or way of experiencing internal and external events
what is an altered state of conscious?
variation from our normal waking state
what are things that can induce an altered conscious state?
meditation or patterns of breathing
the psychodynamic view of conscious distinguishes between what three levels?
conscious, preconscious and unconscious
what is the conscious according to frued?
mental events we are currently aware of
what is the preconscious according to frued?
outside of current awareness but can be easily recalled
what is the unconscious according to frued?
not typically brought into conscious awareness
events and emotions we were experiencing in what level of consciousness were things we needed to treat?
unconscious
what did the iceberg analogy hypothesize?
that there was a lot going on in your system that is below the surface in the unconscious
what is subliminal perception?
below the threshold for conscious perception
what is the insular cortex?
the processing of both interpersonal (emotional: perceive someone as warm and friendly) and physical warmth
cognitive theories about conscious can be broken down into what to processes?
controlled and automatic
what happens in controlled processing?
no prior knowledge on the subject, focused attention
effortful, voluntary use of attention
typically required for novel or difficult tasks
slow but flexible
not typically as good as controlled processing as long as nothing ‘new’ happens
what happens in automatic processing?
little to no conscious processing required
fast but not particularly flexible if something unexpected happened
facilitates divided attention
do cognitive processes have dual modes?
yes!
what is divided attention?
simultaneous processing of information associated with engaging in multiple tasks
what are the advantages of divided attention?
adaptive, good for predictable, highly practiced tasks
what are the disadvantages of divided attention?
less effective if tasks require similar resources or are difficult, can impact other actions
what is the modular mind view>
the mind consists of separate but interacting information processing modules (perception, memory, emotion)
what is visual agnosia?
an inability to visually identify objects
(through other senses, they can recognize an object, but when it comes to just vision, they cannot identify the object)
what is simultagnosia?
inability to perceive more than one object at once
(they can only attend to what they are directly looking at; smaller pieces of a whole picture)
what is blindsight?
eporting not being able to see visual stimuli, though responding in ways that they indicate some levels of awareness
(no conscious awareness)
