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PSYC 100 > Unit 7: Consciousness (Chapter 5) > Flashcards

Unit 7: Consciousness (Chapter 5) Flashcards

1
Q

What is consciousness?

A

Moment-by-moment awareness of ongoing experiences occurring internally and externally

Consciousness encompasses thoughts, emotions, and perceptions of the external world.

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2
Q

How is consciousness described?

A

Subjective and central to the experience of being ‘you’

It reflects personal experiences and perceptions.

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3
Q

What are the components of consciousness?

A

Multiple components including arousal, awareness, and self-awareness

Each component plays a role in how we experience consciousness.

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4
Q

Define arousal in the context of consciousness.

A

Level of wakefulness or alertness

Arousal affects the ability to take in outside stimuli.

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5
Q

What does awareness refer to?

A

Focus on and recognition of some experience

It indicates what we are paying attention to at any moment.

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6
Q

What is self-awareness?

A

Focus on and awareness of oneself as a distinct entity

It distinguishes the self from other aspects of the environment.

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7
Q

What is meant by the term ‘stream of consciousness’?

A

Continuous flow of thoughts

This concept reflects the ongoing nature of conscious experience.

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8
Q

What is the spotlight effect?

A

The conviction that others are paying more attention to oneself than they actually are.

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9
Q

What was the main finding of Gilovich et al., 2000 regarding the spotlight effect?

A

Participants overestimated how many people would remember them wearing an embarrassing shirt.

Participant estimate was 50%. The number of people who actually remembered was 25%.

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10
Q

What does the spotlight effect illustrate about our conscious experience?

A

Our conscious experience differs from those around us, leading us to overestimate how much others pay attention to us.

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11
Q

What is awareness in the context of focused awareness?

A

Awareness is very limited and needs to be rationed.

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12
Q

What is selective attention?

A

Selective attention is the act of focusing one’s awareness onto a particular aspect of one’s experience while ignoring irrelevant stimuli.

Imagery: Flashlight shining on select items

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13
Q

What is inattentional blindness?

A

The failure to perceive information outside the focus of one’s attention.

Recall the invisible gorilla study where 50% of participants failed to see the gorilla; study with money hanging off of tree.

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14
Q

What is change blindness?

A

Change blindness is a form of inattentional blindness in which a person fails to observe a change in a visual stimulus.

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15
Q

What enables mind-wandering?

A

Mind-wandering is enabled by the capacity for perceptual decoupling, which is a shift in attention from external environmental stimuli to internal stimuli or thoughts.

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16
Q

How is mind-wandering defined?

A

Mind-wandering is defined as spontaneous, ‘stimulus-independent’ thought, also referred to as daydreaming. We spend approximately 50% of our time doing this!

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17
Q

What are some examples of mind-wandering?

A

Examples of mind-wandering include fantasizing, remembering the past, and thinking about the future.

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18
Q

What does mind-wandering suggest about our consciousness?

A

Mind-wandering suggests that we are not confined to the here and now.

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19
Q

What was the minimum percentage of samples showing mind-wandering during activities?

A

At least 30% of the samples taken during every activity (except making love).

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20
Q

How does mind-wandering affect happiness?

A

Less happy when mind-wandering, regardless of activity.

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21
Q

What type of thoughts make individuals unhappier during mind-wandering?

A

Unhappier when thinking about neutral or unpleasant topics (vs. current activity).

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22
Q

Does thinking about pleasant topics improve happiness during mind-wandering?

A

No happier when thinking about pleasant topics (vs. current activity).

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23
Q

What is a better predictor of happiness than current activity?

A

Content of thoughts is a better predictor of happiness than current activity.

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24
Q

Upsides of mind-wandering

A

Mind-wandering can be used as a strategy for escaping a boring situation. It can also help us with:
- Creative thinking
- Problem solving
- Organizing and structuring plans (allows us to plan for the future)

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25
Q

What is automaticity?

A

Automaticity is the ability to perform a task without conscious awareness or attention (i.e. allows us to focus our attention elsewhere).

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26
Q

What types of activities can become automatic with practice?

A

Complex activities like driving or reading can become automatic with practice.

Ex: Naming the colour of a word (when said word is the name of a colour) is much harder than reading it, as reading is so automatic.

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27
Q

What is hysteria?

A

Hysteria is an outdated term for conditions characterized by physical symptoms without a known physical cause.

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28
Q

What did Freud speculate about the mind?

A

Freud speculated that the mind comprised several elements and that hysteria stemmed from repressed emotions and traumatic experiences buried in the unconscious.

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29
Q

What are the components of the mind according to the Freudian perspective?

A

The mind is composed of several components: Conscious, Preconscious, and Dynamic unconscious.

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30
Q

What is the Conscious mind?

A

The Conscious mind is the focus of current awareness.

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31
Q

What is the Preconscious mind?

A

The Preconscious mind contains thoughts, feelings, and memories that are not in current awareness but are consciously accessible.

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32
Q

What is the Dynamic unconscious?

A

The Dynamic unconscious consists of inaccessible memories, instincts, and desires. According to Freud, was not linked to consciousness, too threatening to acknowledge.

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33
Q

How does modern psychology view the dynamic unconscious?

A

Modern psychology views unconscious mental processes as influencing behavior, but sees the unconscious mind as a collaborator rather than a competitor of the conscious mind.

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34
Q

What role does the unconscious mind play in daily life?

A

The unconscious mind acts as a collaboration, allowing us to deal with all the information of daily life.

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35
Q

What is cognitive unconscious?

A

Cognitive unconscious refers to mental processes that occur outside of conscious awareness but still influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Ex: Implicit memories, the cocktail party phenomenon.

36
Q

What are implicit memories?

A

Implicit memories are skills and tasks we perform automatically, as well as learned associations between stimuli and responses.

37
Q

What is the cocktail party phenomenon?

A

The ability to pick important information (e.g., someone saying your name) while focusing on other information (e.g., conversation with someone at a party).

Ex: Dichotic listening task, where participants listened to a different message in each ear, and asked to repeat one message. Appeared to be unaware in other ear’s message, but paid attention to salient information, and were slower to repeat words from attended ear if words in unattended ear were synonyms.

38
Q

What does the cocktail party phenomenon suggest about information processing?

A

It suggests that information is being unconsciously processed on another channel.

39
Q

Subliminal perception

A

Processing of sensory information that occurs below the threshold of conscious awareness (sub = “below, limen = “threshold”). Not consciously aware that you are taking in information.

Example study Kent’s Wilson and Zajonc based on the mere exposure effect (showed participants a quick flash of a shape and then asked them which they thought they saw and preferred between two shapes).

40
Q

Mere exposure effect

A

Tendency to like stimuli more after repeated exposure to them.

Ex: with food, shapes

41
Q

Does subliminal advertising actually work?

A

Lab studies:
• May work with small effects, but only under certain conditions-e.g., if prime is goal-relevant .
→ Ex: Drink ad works better it someone is thirsty
• Outside of the laboratory, advertisers cannot control the environment well enough for subliminal messages to work very well.
→ Very distracted by “noise” (other stimuli) around us.

42
Q

The conscious and the unconscious

A

Our minds are capable of doing a lot of things unconsciously (can monitor, understand, and respond to various aspects of our experience without awareness). But the conscious mind can “step in” and take control of behavior when the unconscious mind makes mistakes or encounters something threatening.

E.g., participants do not exhibit inattentional blindness on an inattentional blindness when distractor image is a spider, suggesting that “ancestral threats” readily capture our attention.

43
Q

Reticular formation

A
  • Like “dimmer switch” on attention; like the TV itself (thalamus is the TV signal)
  • Regulates arousal and alertness
  • Raises or lowers the threshold of conscious awareness (makes it easier/harder to take in stimuli)
  • Damage to this region may result in coma (deep unconciousnus, no sleep-wake cycles)
44
Q

Thalamus

A
  • Like TV signals
  • Works with reticular formation to regulate arousal and wakefulness
  • Serves as “relay station of the brain”
  • Thalamic lesions also lead to profound loss of consciousness (e.g., Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome, where one may still have sleep-wake cycles, but unresponsive to stimuli)
  • These regions are necessary but not sufficient for producing consciousness (E.g., like unplugging a TV)
45
Q

Spatial hemi-neglect

A

Condition where individual loses awareness of objects/stimuli one side of the space following brain damage.
* Typically, damage to right parietal lobe → left side neglect (still aware of the right side)

46
Q

Global workspace hypothesis

A

Consciousness arises from “broadcasting” of information across a “global workspace” in the brain.
- Information from various specialized brain regions (e.g., sensory areas, memory centres) is integrated into a central “workspace” .
- Once integrated, this information is “broadcast” or shared with multiple other brain regions simultaneously.
- Allows the concious experience; being aware + responding to stimuli in our environment.

Ex: EEG matching task, where participants were shown two words in succession and needed to determine whether they match. Half trials: first word is visible, other half: first word flashes. Greater neural synchronization across the brain during conscious perception.

47
Q

Default mode network

A

Interconnected set of brain regions (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex, lateral parietal cortex) that are active when the mind is alert and aware but not focused on a particular task (e.g., during rest and mind wandering). → Some regions more active during task, but some regions more active during rest.

• Enables perceptual decoupling → Less activity in DMN when engaging in task requiring focused attention on external stimuli
• Can predict mistakes on visual flanker task
→ Similar to focus attention on a task and have additional stimuli pop up example
• Overlaps substantially with areas involved in social cognition
→ May prepare us for making social advances (think about others’ behaviour)
→ May facilitate social memory after receiving some sort of social information

48
Q

Locked-in syndrome

A

Complete paralysis of voluntary muscles but preservation of consciousness and normal cognitive abilities.

• DMN connectivity decreased in severely brain-damaged patients (in proportion to degree of consciousness impairment) but not in locked-in patients.

49
Q

Bilateral hippocampi damage

A

Patients with said damage cannot vividly recall past events or envision future events (recall hippocampus’ role in mental time travel).

50
Q

Circadian rhythm

A

Body’s natural 24-hour cycle that regulates various physiological processes, including the sleep-wake cycle.
• Determined by both biological & environmental factors.

51
Q

Zeitgeiber

A

External/environmental cue that helps regulate & synchronize an organism’s biological rhythm (“time giver” in German).
• Light → exposure to viving sun (Ex: people on submarines = longer circadian rhythms)
• Food intake
• Social interactions

52
Q

Suprachiasmatic nucleus (the body’s “master clock”)

A

• Part of the hypothalamus that regulates sleep & alertness, and the rhythmic secretion of hormones including melatonin.
• Contains rhythm-generating neurons that increase & decrease rate of action potentials over 24-hour cycle.
• Functions autonomously → even when brain part is isolated surgically.
• Damage to this area results in loss of regular sleep-wake rhythms.
• Stimulated by light: signal travels from specialized light receptors in the retina along the dedicated neural tract to the SCN. Sleep-wake cycle can be lengthened and shortened by artificially changing periods of light/darkness.
→ Light exposure in the AM can help with sleep-onset insomnia
→ Artificial light at night can lead to problems falling asleep

53
Q

Brain activity during awakening

A

Beta waves:
- Low-amplitude, high frequency
- Brain actively processing information

Alpha waves:
- Slower, larger, more regular waves
- Awake but relaxed

54
Q

Brain activity during non-rem sleep stages

A

Divided in 4 stages in humans:
- Theta waves: Stage 1 and 2 (lighter sleep)
- Delta waves: Stage 3 and 4 (deep sleep). If you wake up in these stages, you are very groggy. Stage 4 has the most delta wave activity.

In stage 2 (and early parts of stage 3), special waveforms called K complexes (high amplitude waves) and sleep spindles (burst of rapid activity). Thought to play role in suppressing incoming sensory information, as well as learning & memory.

55
Q

REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep

A

First episode typically occurs 90-120 min after sleep onset.
• Cortical and limbic system arousal
• Back-and-forth eye movements
• Sympathetic nervous system activation: increase in heart rate, increase in blood pressure, irregular breathing, etc.
• Most likely to have vivid dreams
• Muscular paralysis: smaller muscles may twitch, though larger muscles are paralyzed

56
Q

REM behaviour disorder

A

Occurs when these signals are not blocked, so people act out their dreams. Different from sleepwalking, which typically occurs in deep sleep (stage 4).

  • May see complex behaviours (e.g., driving a car, mowing the lawn) —evidence of multilayered consciousness?

Ex: Man in Arizona awoke to his house surrounded by police; wife had arked hiva to fix pool, did it in his sleep, she tried to gut him back to bed; stabbed her and rolled her body into the pool.

57
Q

Sleep cycles

A
  • Roughly 90 mins long
  • Proportion of NREM and REM sleep in each cycle changes throughout the night
  • First half of the night: long periods of NREM sleep, shorter periods of REM sleep
  • Second half of the night: long periods of REM sleep, stages 3 and 4 infrequent or absent in later hours of sleep (why you have more dreams in the morning)
  • Linked to metabolical rate: big animals = long cycles + vice-versa
58
Q

Functions of sleep and sleep deprivation

A
  • People spend about a third of their lives asleep
  • Sleep is essential to life and lack of sleep is directly related to a decline in functioning : slower healing of injuries, impairments of immune system, decreased neurogenesis, impaired memory performance
  • Onset of fatal familial insomnia (rare genetic disorder) is followed by cognitive deterioration, then death
  • Stage 3 & 4 sleep thought to play important role in body repair (nearly all human growth hormone is released during these stages)
    • Greater amounts of NREM sleep following strenuous physical activity (e.g., ultramarathon running)
    TWO NIGHTS OF NORMAL SLEEP DO NOT MAKE UP FOR SLEEP DEPRIVATION

E.g.) Rats deprived of sleep begin to die about 2 weeks after initiation of total sleep deprivation and about 5-6 weeks after initiation of selective REM sleep deprivation.
E.g.) Disturbed sleep patterns & lowered growth hormone secretion in children may contribute to lack of growth (psychosocial short stature). In unstable emotional env. = harder to sleep = shorter + vice-verra
E.g.) Students who slept remembered more items from a set of nonsense list of syllables than those who didn’t.

59
Q

REM rebound

A

Tendency to spend more time in REM sleep if deprived of it on previous nights. Shared with non-human animals.
- Possible roles: Memory consolidation, helping “wire” the brain (Infants, and especially premature infants, spend the most time in REM Sleep)

60
Q

Why do we dream?

A
  • Strongly associated with REM sleep
  • Tend to dream about what is familiar and relevant, as well as emotional
61
Q

Freud’s theory of dreaming

A

Dreams are a form of wish fulfillment, containing manifest and latent content.

62
Q

Difference between the manifest and latent content of a dream

A

Manifest content: the visible, surface content of a dream or behavior that disguises the hidden, latent content.
Latent content: the hidden drives and wishes.

63
Q

Benefits of dreaming

A

Dreaming may help sort through recent experience, consolidate memories, & solve problems. Amount of dreaming increases following stressful, emotionally challenging situations.

E.g.) In rats, similar pattern & timing of activation during maze running and REM sleep
E.g.) 70% students thinking about problems before bedtime report finding solution in dreams (only 50% of observers though).

64
Q

Activation-synthesis hypothesis

A

Dreams as a product of brain’s attempts to organize the chaotic patterns of brain activity during sleep into a semi-coherent narrative.

Dreams of flying or falling may be caused by unusual activation of vestibular system during REM sleep.

65
Q

Depressants

A

Drugs that decrease activity levels in the nervous system.
- Lowers levels of arousal, making people feel calm and sleepy.
- Insomnia is often treated with depressants.
- Higher doses can decrease nervous system activity enough to impair thinking, induce a coma, or even stop breathing.

E.g.) alcohol, barbiturates, opioids, Xanax…

66
Q

Alcohol myopia

A

A narrowing of attention leading to focus on most salient information (“tunnel vision”).
• Coupled with impairment in top-down control over impulses
• May contribute to impulsive behaviour, risky decisions, aggression.

E.g.) Alcohol and risky sexual behaviour: focusing on immediate, salient cues (physical attraction) vs. more distal, less obvious cues (consequences of unprotected sex).

67
Q

Stimulants

A

Drugs that increase activity levels in the nervous system. Examples include:
• Caffeine: mental alertness, concentration, improved athletic performance
• Nicotine: increased heart rate & blood pressure, alertness
• Cocaine, methamphetamine: rush of euphoria, energy

  • Decreases the brain’s levels of neurochemicals like dopamine which leaves users with depressed functions, in these systems and subsequent declines in well-being.
68
Q

Hallucinogens

A

Drugs that distort sensory perception and can trigger sensory experiences such as sights and sounds in the absence of any sensory input (hallucinations).
• Most psychedelics are structurally similar to serotonin
• Abnormal serotonin states characterize both hallucinations + REM sleep

E.g.) LSD, PCP, mescaline.
E.g.) THC (main active ingredient in marijuana) has hallucinogenic properties as well.

69
Q

Hypnosis

A

Altered state of consciousness involving focused attention & reduced peripheral awareness, characterized by enhanced response to suggestion. Suggested to cause a state of dissociation, where one half of a person’s consciousness surrenders to the hypnotist and the other observes the events from a detached perspective.

70
Q

Hypnotic analgesia

A

A mode of hypnotic suggestion when the subject is instructed to concentrate on a specific body area and to imagine that this area is anesthetized.

71
Q

Psychoactive drugs

A

Chemicals that influence consciousness or behaviour by altering the brains’ chemical signalling. Include:
• Depressants
• Stimulants
• Hallucinogens

72
Q

MDMA/Ecstasy

A

Has both hallucinogenic and stimulant properties.
- Chemically resembles both mescaline and methamphetamine
- Produces relatively mild hallucinations and feelings of elation, empathy, and closeness to others

73
Q

Hypnosis fictions and facts

A

Myths:
• Hypnosis cannot help recover “lost” memories
• No evidence that can be used to compel subjects to perform acts that they could not be persuaded to perform when not hypnotized

Facts:
• Can produce analgesia (reduction in pain) → less activation in pain regions of the brain
• Can help manage stress and psychiatric symptoms (depression, anxiety)
• Can help produce behavioural changes (e.g., quitting smoking)

74
Q

How does hypnosis work?

A

May represent an extreme form of selective attention.
• Focus on the what of the hypnotist’s suggestion, neglecting the why
• Supporting evidence
• Consistent with data on who is most likely to be hypnotized (highly hypnotizable people show more ability to focus intensely on specific tasks, become deeply absorbed in activities like reading)
• ADHD medication may enhance hypnotizability

75
Q

Free will

A

The ability to consciously control our actions & decisions.

Found that specific parts of the brain encoded outcome of participant’s motor decision (left vs. right) up to 10 seconds before conscious awareness of decision. Thus, the experience of willing an action may be a post hoc causal inference that our thoughts produced the action.

Other research shows that people feel agency over decisions that they were manipulated into
• E.g), TMS stimulation provoking use of left hand in right-handed people (recall work on split-brain patients and the left hemisphere’s post hoc rationalizations of behaviour initiated by the right hemisphere)

76
Q

Introspect

A

Observing one’s own conscious experience and trying to describe it.

77
Q

Inverted spectrum problem

A

Do we really all see the same “red” or “yellow”, etc?

78
Q

Synesthesia

A

A condition in which people experience information from one sensory system as if it were coming through multiple senses.

Experiencing colours when hearing notes on a piano.

79
Q

Sleep

A

A regularly occurring state of altered consciousness that occurs when arousal is very low.

80
Q

Unihemispheric sleep

A

A pattern of sleep in which only one half (or hemisphere) of the brain experiences slow-wave sleep at a time, while the other remains awake.

81
Q

Insomnia

A

Persistent difficulty staying or falling asleep. Experienced by about 10% of adults.

82
Q

Sleepwalking

A

A sleep disorder that involves walking or performing other tasks while in deep sleep. Occurs more often in children, usually takes place in Stage 3 rather than REM sleep.

83
Q

Night terrors

A

A disorder in which people, still asleep, look awake and terrified, with high heart and breathing rates.

84
Q

Narcolepsy

A

A condition in which one has uncontrollable sleep attacks at times when one wouldn’t normally be sleeping.

85
Q

Drug tolerance

A

The diminished response to a drug that results from prolonged use, leading the drug user to require larger doses of the drug to achieve the same effect.

86
Q

Withdrawal

A

Unpleasant physical symptoms that result when a person is physically dependant on a drug, and its effects wear off.

87
Q

Meditation

A

A set of practices that focus on training mental processes like attention, awareness, and sometimes emotions. Composed of two major categories: focused attention meditation and open monitoring meditation.

PSYC 100 (14 decks)

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