Unit 6- States of consciousness Flashcards
Modes of Consciousness
Conscious
Pre-conscious
Unconscious
Automaticity and Dissociation
Consciousness involves
- Monitoring ourselves and our environments so that percepts, memories and thoughts are represented in awareness.
2.Controlling ourselves and our environments so that we are able to initiate and terminate behavioural and cognitive activities.
Monitoring
is the processing of information from the environment, which is the main function of the body’s sensory system. It leads to awareness of what is going on in our surroundings as well as within our own bodies. Our consciousness focuses on some stimuli and ignores others. Our attention is selective. Some events take precedence over others in gaining access to consciousness and in initiating action
Controlling
is another function of consciousness. It involves planning, initiating and guiding our actions. Our actions must be guided and arranged to coordinate with events around us. Not all actions are guided by conscious decisions, nor are the solutions to all problems carried out at a conscious level. The solution to a problem may occur out of the blue without our being aware that we have been thinking.
Preconscious
We cannot focus on everything that is going on around us at any given time, nor can we examine our entire store of knowledge and memories of the past. At any given time, we can focus attention on only a few stimuli. We ignore, select, and reject all the time, so that the contents of consciousness are continually changing. Objects or events that are not the focus of attention can still have some influence on consciousness. For example, you are talking to a friend in a cafeteria line, ignoring other voices and general noise, when the sound of your own name in another conversation catches your attention. You would not have heard your name in the other conversation if you had not, in some way, been monitoring that conversation. We register and evaluate stimuli we do not consciously perceive.
Pre-conscious memories
Many memories and thoughts that are not a part of your consciousness at this moment can be brought to consciousness when needed. The term Preconscious Memories is used to refer to memories that are accessible to consciousness. They include specific memories of personal events as well as the information accumulated over a lifetime, such as your knowledge of the meanings of words, the layout of streets of a city, or a particular location or particular country. They also include knowledge about learnt skills like the procedures involved in driving a car or the sequence of steps in tying a shoelace. These procedures, once mastered, generally operate outside conscious awareness, but when our attention is called to them, we are capable of describing the steps involved.
The Unconscious
One of the earliest theories of consciousness is the psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud. He and his followers believed that there is a portion of the mind, the Unconscious that contains some memories, impulses and desires that are not accessible to consciousness. Freud believed that some emotionally painful memories and wishes are repressed- that is, diverted to the unconscious, where they may continue to influence our actions even though we are not aware of them. Repressed thoughts and impulses cannot enter into our consciousness, but they can affect us in indirect ways- through dreams, irrational behaviours, mannerisms, and slips of the tongue (today called Freudian slips-they are believed to be unintentional remarks that are assumed to reveal hidden impulses).
Freud believed that unconscious thoughts, desires and impulses are the cause of most mental illnesses. His methods of psychoanalysis attempt to draw the repressed material back into consciousness and in doing so cure the individual. Most psychologists accept the idea that there are memories and mental processes to which we have no conscious access. For example simple mental calculations, although we have conscious access to the outcomes of these mental processes, we have no conscious access to their operations.
Automaticity and Dissociation
An important function of consciousness is control of our actions. Some activities however, are practiced so often that they become habitual or automatic. This habituation of responses that initially required conscious attention is termed Automaticity. A skill like riding a bike, once learnt, no longer requires our attention. It becomes automatic and allows a relatively uncluttered consciousness to focus on other matters. The more automatic an action becomes, the less it requires conscious control. One way of interpreting this is to say that the control is still there (we can focus on automatic processes if we want) but it has been dissociated from consciousness.
Dissociation
The French psychiatrist Pierre Janet (1889) originated the concept of Dissociation, in which under certain conditions some thoughts and actions become split off, or Dissociated, from the rest of consciousness and function outside of awareness. Dissociation differs from Freud’s concept of repression because the dissociated memories and thoughts are accessible to consciousness. Repressed memories, in contrast, cannot be brought to consciousness. They have to be inferred from signs or symptoms such as slips of the tongue.
When faced with a stressful situation, we may temporarily put it out of our minds in order to function effectively; when bored, we may lapse into daydreams or reverie. These are mild examples of dissociation that involve dissociating one part of consciousness from another. More extreme cases include cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder.
Sleep and Dreams
Sleep seems to be the opposite of wakefulness, but the two states seem to have similarities. The phenomenon of dreaming indicates that we think while we sleep, although the type of thinking we do in dreams differs in various ways from the type we do while awake. We form memories while sleeping (we can remember dreams). People who are
asleep are not entirely insensitive to their environments. Sleep in not totally planless; some people can decide to wake up at a certain time and do so. Sleep is not totally quiescent; we are active-tossing and turning, and some people walk in their sleep.
Stages of Sleep
Analysis of the patterns of brain waves suggests that there are five (5) stages of sleep. The first four are differing depths of sleep and a fifth stage called REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep).
Stages 1 & 2 - when a person closes his/her eyes and relaxes, the brain waves characteristically show a regular pattern of 8-12 hertz (cycles per second). These are known as Alpha waves. In stage one sleep the brain waves become less regular. Stage 2 is characterized by the appearance of spindles-short runs of rhythmical responses of 12-16 hertz. There are sleep spindles-occasional sharp rises and falls in the amplitude of the brain waves. This is called K-complex.
3-5 Sleep stages`
Stages 3 & 4 - these are deeper stages characterized by slow waves of 1-2 hertz, which are called Delta waves. It is generally harder to wake a sleeper during stages 3 & 4 although it is possible.
REM Sleep/Stage 5 - An adult, after having been asleep for an hour or so, the brain waves become very active, even more than when a person is awake-but the person does not wake up. Rapid eye movement is detected and it is so pronounced that one can see the sleeper’s eye moving around under the closed eye lids.
General Stages of Sleep
Stages 1-4 are called non-REM sleep or NREM. We have these variations of sleep stages alternating throughout the night. Sleep begins with NREM stages and proceeds to REM sleep. Over the course of an eight (8) hour night, there are usually about 4 or 5 distinct sleep cycles, each containing NREM and REM sleep. There may be a couple of occasional brief awakenings as morning approaches.
Sleep Theory
Dale Edgar and William Dement (1992) have proposed an Opponent-Process Model of Sleep and Wakefulness. According to this model, the brain possesses two opponent processes that govern the tendency to fall asleep and remain awake. They are the Homeostatic Sleep Drive and the Clock Dependent Alerting Process.
The Homeostatic Sleep Drive is a physiological process that strives to obtain the amount of sleep required for a stable level of daytime alertness. The Clock-Dependent Alerting Process is the process in the brain that arouses us at a particular time each day. It is controlled by the so-called biological clock. This “clock” controls a series of psychological and physiological changes, including rhythms of alertness that are termed Circadian Rhythms because they occur every 24 hours. The biological clock is affected by exposure to light: daylight signals it to stop secretion of melatonin, a hormone that induces sleep. The two opponent processes - the Homeostatic Sleep Drive and the Clock-Dependent Alerting process interact to produce our daily cycle of sleep and wakefulness.
Sleep Disorders
It appears that most adults require 8-9 hours of sleep to be free from day-time sleepiness. A Sleep Disorder exists when inability to sleep well produces impaired daytime functioning or excessive sleepiness.
Sleep Deprivation
A common sign of Sleep Deprivation is inability to get through the day without a temporary loss of energy and alertness, usually occurring during mid-afternoon. Sleep researchers have demonstrated that alertness significantly increases when people who normally get 8 hours of sleep get an additional 2 hours of sleep. The loss of as little as an hour of sleep increases the likelihood of inattentiveness, mistakes, illness and accidents (Maas, 1998).
Insomnia
refers to complaints about a symptom, namely, dissatisfaction with the amount or quality of one’s sleep. A perplexing feature of insomnia is that people seem to overestimate the amount of sleep lost. The problem may be that some people remember only time spent awake and think they have not slept because they have no memory of doing so.
Narcolepsy
is a relatively rare but severe sleep disorder. A person with Narcolepsy has recurring, irresistible attacks of drowsiness and may fall asleep at any time. Such episodes can happen several times a day in severe cases and last from a few seconds to 30 minutes. Narcoleptics have difficulty keeping jobs because of their daytime sleepiness and are potentially dangerous if they are driving a car, or operating machinery when an attack occurs. Essentially, narcolepsy is the intrusion of REM episodes in daytime hours. During attacks, victims go quickly into an REM state, so rapidly, in fact, that they may lose muscle control and collapse before they can lie down.
Sleep Apnea
is another rare but sevre sleep disorder. In Apnea, the individual stops breathing while asleep. There are two reasons for apnea attacks:
1. The brain fails to send a “breathe” signal to the diaphragm and other breathing muscles, thus causing breathing to stop
2. The muscles at the top of the throat become too relaxed, allowing the windpipe to partially close and forces the breathing muscles to pull harder on incoming which causes the airway to completely collapse.
Sleep apnea episode
During an apnea episode, the oxygen level of the blood drops dramatically, leading to the secretion of emergency hormones. This reaction causes the sleeper to awaken in order to begin breathing again. Most people have a few episodes each night, people with severe sleep problems may have several hundred episodes per night. With each one, they wake up to resume breathing, but these arousals are so brief that the person is unaware of them. They can spend up to 12 hours or more in bed each night and still be so sleepy the next day that they cannot function. Sleep apnea is common among older men.
Dreams
Dreaming is an altered state of consciousness in which picture stories are constructed based on memories and current concerns, or on fantasies and images. Investigators do not yet understand why people dream much less why they dream what they do.
* Although many people do not recall their dreams in the morning, evidence from studies of REM sleep suggest that non-recallers often do not wake up as much as dreaming recallers. Most times when people say that they do not dream, it usually means that they do not recall their dreams. Evidence suggests that preschool children as well as adults with certain types of brain damage do not appear to dream. Primary school children also do not seem to dream as often as adults do.
*
From studies, it appears that dreams last as long as the incidents will take in reality
Sometimes people do know when they are dreaming. Their awareness, however, does not seem to interfere with the spontaneous flow of the dream.
Meditation
refers to achieving an altered state of consciousness by performing certain rituals and exercises such as controlling and regulating breathing, sharply restricting one’s field of attention, eliminating external stimuli, assuming yogic body positions, and forming mental images of an event or symbol. The result is a pleasant, mildly altered subjective state in which the individual feels mentally and physically relaxed.
meditation techniques
Two common meditation techniques are Opening-Up Meditation, in which a person clears his/her mind in order to receive new experiences, and Concentrative Meditation, in which the benefits are obtained by actively attending to some object, word or idea.
Benefits of meditation
may reduce arousal (especially in people who are easily stressed) and may be valuable for people suffering from anxiety and tension. Some researchers argue that the benefits of meditation are largely from relaxation of the body. Others suggest that the psychological benefits of meditation may be due to learning to put aside repetitive and troubling thoughts
