TOPIC 3: Consciousness Flashcards
Consciousness
One’s moment-to-moment subjective experience of the world
Change blindness
A failure to notice large changes in one’s environment
How do the limits on consciousness contribute to change blindness?
Major changes to the environment may go unnoticed when conscious awareness is
focused elsewhere
Endogenous attention
Attention that is directed voluntarily.
Exogenous attention
Attention that is directed involuntarily.
You see an accident on the side of the road and cannot help but slow down to look at the
traumatic scene. Why?
exogenous attention occurs when attention is unintentionally shifted to an emotional
stimulus.
Why should you avoid using a laptop during lectures?
Laptop use in the classroom may shift attention away from the lecture, leading you to
miss or superficially process information. You might have the illusion that you were paying
attention because you have no awareness of events that happened when your attention was
otherwise occupied.
Priming
occurs when the response to a stimulus is influenced or facilitated by recent
experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus. Priming can influence how you perceive
an object, the speed or ease with which you respond and the choices you make.
Subliminal perception
The processing of information by sensory systems without conscious
awareness
Which type of subliminal messages are most likely to affect behavior?
messages that invoke emotion or motivation may subtly shift behavior but such messages
do not affect complex behaviors like buying or self-confidence
When Tara was learning to knit, she had to pay attention to every stitch. Now she can knit
while watching television. Why can she knit now without giving it full attention?
learning a complex task like knitting requires controlled processing. Once you learn the
task, it becomes automatic and no longer requires full attention
Meditation
A mental procedure that focuses attention on external object, an internal event or a sense of awareness
Suppose a person meditating focuses on thoughts of waves rolling onto a beautiful
beach. Is the person practicing concentrative meditation or mindfulness meditation?
concentrative, because the person is focusing on a specific image
Does showing that long-term meditators have less age-related change in brain structure
prove meditation reduces neural aging and decline?
no, correlation does not equal causation. Those who practice meditation may also have
other lifestyle differences that affect brain aging.
What is flow?
the state of being deeply immersed in a completely enjoyable and satisfying experience
that may have no consequence beyond itself
Circadian rhythms
biological patterns that occur at regular intervals as a function of time of
day.
REM sleep
The stage of sleep marked by rapid eye movements, paralysis of motor
systems, and dreaming.
After the fact explanation (hindsight bias)
Hindsight bias is when a person looks back and at an event and believes they could have predicted the outcome. This means that most people believe their judgment is better than it is.
What hormone, released by the pineal gland, promotes sleep?
melatonin
Dream
Products of an altered state on consciousness in which images and fantasies are
confused with reality
Activation-synthesis hypothesis
a hypothesis of dreaming proposing that the brain tries to
make sense of random brain activity by synthesizing the activity with stored memories.
Is a dream about folding and putting away laundry more likely to occur during rem sleep or
non-rem sleep?
non-REM sleep, when dreams are often dull and lach the bizarre qualities typical of REM
sleep
After an exhausting day helping your friend move into a new apartment, you sleep a great
deal that night. Which theory of sleep does this behavior support?
the restorative theory
Insomnia
a disorder characterized by an inability to sleep that causes significant problems in
daily life
