Task 3.3 Flashcards
What is meant by introspection ?
- looking into our own minds and reporting what we discover there
- searching for a state of consciousness
1. It is a thought process /thinking about ones past primary conscious experiences = retrospection
2. Data comes from memory
What is the most well known tool to discover cosnciousness ?
- Introspection -> Since it is yet the best method to study consciousness
How do participants report there introspection ?(define the two types)
- Mostly informal = what ever comes up in your mind
- Formal = introspection in a systematic manner
How did introspection differ between past and current ?
- In the past it was thought that all mentall process are consciouss -> So you could report on them
- Cureently we know that some mental process are unconsciousness and some are consicious -> So not all mental procces can be reported via inrospection
What is the difference between introspection and introspective verbal report?
- introspective verbal report = is a verbal description of your conscious
experience - Introspection is = you oberving for yourself ur conscious experience
What are some major weakness regarding introspection ? (only if we accept reconstruction = intrrospection)
- recalling can lead to reconstruct prior events with filling the gaps
- we base a lot on prior beliefs
- introspection is limited via memory storage and retrieval process
- > basicall it is restricted by limitations of memory storage and retrieval processes
What are the 3 types of introspection ?
- Analytic
- Descriptive
- Interpretive
What is meant by Analytic introspection ?
- Describe experiences in terms of elementary constituents
- Those elements can be identified via introspection
- it is based on modern structualism
- Example: describing a table in 3D terms
What are some limitations regarding the analytic introspection ?
- Theoretical foundation “struturlism was exchanged by the Gestalt psychology = it is more about unified configurations rather then elemants
- unreliable (same condition = differnt reports)
- elementary bases are just to basic for complex thoughts
What is meant by descriptive phenomenal introspection?
- description of one’s conscious experience in natural language term
- What did I perceive/think/feel?
- try to report as closely as possible to the way we originally experienced them
- Usually connected to dreams
What is meant by interpretive introspection?
- intended to discover the causes of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
- Asking yourself WHY you feel these things
- Try to identify antecedents (vorläufer) = relevant prior events and thoughts which make us think the way we do think
What are some limitations of the interpretive introspection?
- Some doubt that we know the causes of our own thoughts
What is issue between desrciptive and interpretive introspection?
- The distinction is quiet tricky
- Sometimes we can not really say if for example Love is what we feel or why we feel certain thinks
- Only way to distinluish those terms is via identifying the intentions of the particpant
What are some critiques on IVR ?
- Behaviourists: consciousness plays no role in causing people to behave the way they do -> thefore reporting them makes no sense
- Psychologist: IVR are inaccurate and unreliable
What are the major limitations of IVR ?
- Forgetting
- Reconstruction errors
- Verbal discription errors
- Distortion Through Observation
- Censorship
- Lack of Independent Verification
- Substitution of Inferences for Observations
- Experimental demands
What is meant by forgetting ?
- Based on multistore model
- You can only report memory in STM or if they have been tansferred to LTM and can be retrieved from STM
- everything which is not stored by the LTM is forgotten
Name 4 facts when verbal reports will be incomplete or inaccurate ? (regarding forgetting)
- Never attended to the event so not available in STM
- Info might be available for reporting but for some reason you don’t report it (Censorship protecting prvate information)
- Wasn’t transferred into LTM
- Cannot be retrieved from LTM
How can we assure that verbal reports are accurate ?
- Emotional attachment
- Rehersal
- Collecting the memory when still in STM
- Put awareness on the participant
- No pressure
What is meant by reconstruction errors ?
- recall is a combination of actuall recalling and partly on filling in the gaps with plausible details
- memory has a different order then actual event to create a coherent story line
- > errors done by patient
- mostly for LTM
What is meant by verbal description difficulties ?
- Conscious experiences cannot be adequately described in words or people report same stuff differently
- mostly strong emotions
How do you overcome the verbal description difficulty ?
- training to use special vocabulary !!
What is meant by Distortion through Observation ?
- when u observe someone while he knows that he will be observed his stream of memory does not reflect his every day memory stream
How to overcome the Distortion Through Observation ?
- do not give a head ups prior to the observation
- or make us of a double blind study
What is meant by a double blind study ?
- A double-blind study is one in which neither the participants nor the experimenters know who is receiving which particular treatment
What does censorship mean ?
- you choose to keep secrets instead or reporting everything (aggressive or sexual thoughts)
How can you overcome the problem of censorship ?
- Ask only about general experience not specific
- give the participants categorize
What is meant by experimenatl demands ?
- Those are situational cues from which subjects try to figure out what the experimenter expects them to do
- Subjects want to be helpful so they are more likely to report what the research wants them to report
- use exaggeration (übertreibung)
What is meant by lack of indipendent verification ?
- Researchers have no way to independently check/verify on the accuracy of subjects’ reports
How can the poblem of indipendent verification be overcome ?
- check of consistency with other reports (from different or same person)
- look at other eternal cues (facial expression)
- Check if the reported information go along with prior theories
What is meant by substitution of Inferences for Observations ?
- Similar to reconstruction
- Make plausible inferences using a priori theories about the causes of human actions instead of reporting actual facts
Which methods study the ongoing stream of consciousness ? (methods of obtaining introspective reports)
- Thinking out loud
- Thought sampeling
- Retrospective report
Which further methods which are not driectly study the ongoing stream of consciousness ?
- Event recording
- Diaries
- Group questionnaires
Define thinking out loud and name the pros and cons of the method:
- Continuous verbal report while solving a task
- PRO: Lots of detailed info about stream of consciousness (real time) + basically no forgetting
- CON: introspection and report may alter thought process
Define thought sampeling and name the pros and cons of the method:
- Whenever there is a signal, they should report what they were thinking at that
moment - PRO: less distortion in thought procces + no forgetting
- CON: Not as much detailes as thinking out loud
Define retrospective reports and name the pros and cons of the method:
- Does not study the ongoing stream
- used to collect data about thoughts that
occurred on a specified previous occasion - PRO: Doesn’t interfere with ongoing thought process during the main task
- CON: Forgetting, reconstruction errors, also substituting inferences from observations could occur
Define event recording and name the pros and cons of the method:
- It is more about identifying a type of thoughts rather then the full range of content
-> done via a notebook or on a tape recorder - PRO: helps to tracing changes in the frequency of a particular type
of thought -> if treamtent is working - CON: Forgett to report relevant stuff because of habbit reporting
Define diaries and name the pros and cons of the method:
- Diary = narative report
- PRO: Lots of content + large range of consciouss experience
- CON: Very selective + unsystematic + reconstruction error + uncontrolled reporting (could cheat) -> Not usefull for testing a hypotheiss
Define group questionnaires and name the pros and cons of the method:
- Get a lot of data from a lot of people as quickly and cheaply as possible.
- PRO: Only useful to comapre thoughts between a large group
- CON: Forgetting, closed questions responses must fit in a given format which leads to less discovery
How do we figure out neural correlates of conscious visual awareness?
- contrast neural correlates of stimulus processing culminating in visual awareness
from neural correlates of stimulus processing unaccompanied by awareness - We need to identify neural events reliably and uniquely
correlated with states of consciousness therfore we need to earse a stimulus from visual awareness
What are the two key components for the stratgeies that identify “neural correlates of conscious visual awareness”
- The startegy must mirror a stimulus conditions in everyday visual experiences
- Technique must clearly sepperate awareness from unawareness
What is a comman mistake while detecting “neural correlates of conscious visual awareness”: (dont know about this
- Degraded visual stimulation
- or to use a to overwhelming stimuli
- does not typify everyday
vision
What does degraded visual stimulation ? ( dont know about this)
- Removing a visual stimuli from awareness
- Present stimuli too briefly for detection
When is the degraded visual stimulus useful ? (dont know about this)
- when u sued it to cover up the perception based on limitations of the central neuronal process (qualia)
- i does not make any sense to give a unclear stimulus input such as an optic blur
Neme the 7 strategies to detect the”neural correlates of conscious visual awareness”
- Visual Backward Masking
- Visual Crowding
- Bistable Perception
- Binocular Rivalry
- Motion-Induced Blindness
- Inattentional and Change Blindness
- Attentional Blink
What are the 8 criterias which each of the method has been tested for ?
- Variety of stimuli
- Stimulus size
- Visual flied location
- Temporal aspects of stimulation
- Unambiguous invisibility
- Invariant stimulation
- Duration
- Predictability
What is meant by Variety of stimuli ?
- is the technique effective at a wide variety of stimuli
What is meant by Stimulus size ?
- does the technique work over a wide range of stimulus sizes
What is meant by Visual flied location ?
- does the technique work equally well in central and in peripheral vision?
- outer edges of retina
- central vision = within the foveaa
What is meant by Temporal aspects of stimulation ?
- Is there any time restriction
What is meant by Unambiguous invisibility ?
- does the state of unawareness involve complete, unambiguous invisibility of the stimulus
What is meant by Invariant stimulation ?
- does the physical stimualtion stays the same when visual awareness fluctuates (tired)
What is meant by Duration ?
- do the periods of unawareness last for longer than a few hundred milliseconds
What is meant by Predictability ?
- is the onset of unawareness controllable, and are the durations of unawareness predictable
Explain the strategie of visual masking and compare it to the tested criterias:
- Backward maskinking = Brief target stimulus followed shortly by a mask
- Forward masking = First the mask and then the target
- Mask = A different picture
- A currently popular theory posits that the mask disrupts feedback signals associated with the target -> it halts’ the processing of the target,
- disruption in peripheral stages of processing
- Yellow: Stimulus size, Unambiguous invisibility, invariant stimulation
- RED: Duration and temporal
Explain the strategie of visual crowding and compare it to the tested criterias:
- Normally visible figure can be unrecognisable when flanked by other, nearby stimuli (identifying one person in the crowd)
- Question: Variety of stimuli and stimulus size
- Yellow: /
- Red: field location (only for peripheral), Unambiguous invisibility, invarient stimulation
Explain the strategie of Bistable Perception and compare it to the tested criterias:
- Ambiguous figures lead to fluctuations in perception despite/(trotz) unchanging visual stimulation
- Brain focus first one interpretation and then on the other (two competing states of awareness)
Example: bistable figure - works with ambiguity
- Yellow: /
- Red: Variety of stimuli
Predictabiliy
Explain the strategie of Binocular Rivalry and compare it to the tested criterias:
- Presenting dissimilar monocular patterns to corresponding areas of the two eyes produces fluctuations in visual awareness
- works with visual conflict
- Yellow: /
- RED: Stimulus size, predictability
Explain the strategie of motion induced blindness and compare it to the tested criterias:
- Small object in larger optic flow (moving) field -> the object can disappear from awareness
for several seconds at a time - Yellow: Variety of stimuli and stimulus size
- Red: Visual field location and predictability
Explain the strategie of “distracted attention” and compare it to the tested criterias:
- Visual awareness of an object can be disrupted by
distracting an observer’s attention from that object - IB: attention focused on one object or event can manipulate people temporarily ‘blind’
- CB:when viewing two successive pictures separated by a blank interval, observers might fail to notice a change in the picture
- Yellow: Visual field location,temporal aspects, (predictability, duration invarient stimulation,unambigious invisability only for IB)
- RED: only for CB predictability
Explain the strategie of “Attentinoal” Blink and compare it to the tested criterias:
- When 2 visual targets are closely followed up you most likly miss the second target
- but A stimulus made invisible by the AB
can still impact visual processing - Yellow: unambigious invisibility
- RED:temporal aspects, duration
