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Introductory Psychology
WINTER 2014
Consciousness
Chapter 6 of Feist & Rosenberg “Psychology: Perspectives & Connections”
Van Selst
Consciousness
Consciousness
one’s awareness of stimuli and events inside and
outside of one’s self;
An awareness of the sensations, thoughts, &
feelings that one is attending to at a given
moment;
Awareness of one’s surroundings and of what’s
on one’s mind at a given moment (per text)
Wakefulness (arousal) vs. Awareness
Van Selst (Winter 2009)
Lucid Dreaming
Vegetative
Minimally Conscious
Persistent Vegetative State
Minimally
Conscious State
Wakefulness & Awareness
Wakefulness: degree of alertness (awake
vs. asleep)
Awareness: monitoring of information from
environment and from one’s own
thoughts
Vegetative State: minimal consciousness;
eyes may be open but person is
otherwise non-responsive
Coma: eyes are closed and person is
unresponsive and unarousable
Glasgow Coma Scale
Illustrations of “UNCONSCIOUS” Processing:
Subliminal Messages? – A stimulus that is presented below the threshold for
awareness
• Greenwald “unconscious self-help” tapes… perceived effectiveness.
• Greenwald/Merikle “perception without awareness”???
Mere Exposure – the more often you see a stimulus, the
• more you come to like it. Form of influence w/o awareness
Priming – Tendency for a recently presented word or concept to facilitate
responses in a subsequent situation. Quicker to read “doctor” after “nurse”
presented than after “apple”
Prosopagnosia – inability to recognize familiar faces, although brain activity
increases despite non-recognition
Blindsight – damage to visual cortex resulting in the encoding of visual info without
awareness
Tip-of-the-Toungue (ToT) Phenomena – some information is present but
unavailable
Consciousness
What constitutes “Subliminal” (below
threshold) Perception?
• Limen: “limit” or threshold …
subliminal… below threshold.
• Which Threshold?
•Problem of declaring an absolute
absence of conscious awareness
Consciousness
Subliminal?Cards down the hall until “cannot identify it” subjectively; but is this truly
“unconscious” despite subjective reports that there is no “conscious” experience of identification.
“nulling consciousness”: required if you are to claim that all information presented is available ONLY to the unconscious (this is a MAJOR problem for “absolute threshold” of consciousness type arguments (e.g., “subliminal perception” is perception below the threshold of consciousness – and thus we should be unaware of it at ANY conscious level).
Multiple-choice versus identification
Explicit vs. ImplicitTask focused versus “other questions” (e.g., which brighter?)
Processes in opposition:place “conscious” knowledge such that it operates in the opposite direction as the
“unconscious” knowledge. For instance, when completing a STEM-COMPLETION task (e.g., D _ _ K), the instruction to include items from the previous memory list versus instructions to exclude the items from the previous memory lists.
Consciousness
Unconscious Influence?
Despite not being
aware of the words
that they “saw”, those
exposed to positive
words were happier
and those exposed to
negative words
reported being
sadder. This indicates
that moods can be
influenced without
awareness
Consciousness
Attention: a state of awareness consisting of the
sensations, thoughts, & feelings that one is
focused on in a given moment
AWARE UNAWARE
CONSCIOUS UNCONSCIOUS
EXPLICIT IMPLICIT
ATTENDED UNATTENDED
Selective attention
• Ability to focus awareness on a single stimulus to the
exclusion of other stimuli.
• Ability to focus awareness on specific features in the
environment while ignoring others (text)
Dichotic listening task (analogy)
• Unable to follow/remember competing conversation.
Cocktail party effect
• Ability to attend selectively to one person’s speech among
competing conversations but highly relevant stimuli still detected
Failures of selective attention
Stroop Interference
Consciousness
Selective Attention
Read the “black words” only
In performing an experiment like this one on man attention car it house is boy critically hat important shoe that candythe old material horse that tree is pen being phone read cow by the hot subject tape for pin the stand relevant view task sky be red cohesive man and car grammatically house complete boy but hat without shoe either candybeing horse so tree easy that phone full cow attention is hot not tape required pin in stand order view to sky read red it nor too difficult
When people do this type of task they do not effectively remember the red words
Selective Attention
What happens to unattended information?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
Van Selst (Winter 2009)
Failures of Selective Attention
Ironic Processes
The harder ones tries to control a thought or behavior, the less likely one is to succeed, especially if distracted, tired, or under stress.
Examples:
1) Do not think about a white bear
2) Subjects instructed to control a pendulum moved it more than those not instructed.
3) Golfers were more likely to overshoot a putt when trying not to do so.
Consciousness
Biological Rhythm
Any periodic fluctuation in a biological organism – 28 day lunar cycle, 24 hour day, 90 min. activity-rest cycle
Circadian Rhythm
Physiologically based
Sleep/wake cycle
Roughly 24.5 hours (book says 25)
Neurological clock
Body temperature warmer (day) and colder (eve) following circadian rhythm
65% of major human error catastrophes [3 mile island, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez] occur between midnight and 6 AM.
Vehicle accidents 5x more likely at night
SLEEP
Functions of sleep
• Restores neural growth
• Consolidates memory
• Produces enzymes that
protect against cellular
damage
Sleep
Sleep Stage Cycles
Presleep-1-2-3-4-3-2-REM-2-3-4-3-…
What differentiates REM from non-REM sleep?
Why is REM sleep considered “paradoxical sleep”? (see page 231)
Characterized by rapid eye movements (REM), high arousal, frequent dreaming.
Hours of sleep
REM Sleep
Sleep Deprivation
Sleep deprivation and fatigue can lead to:
Capsize / auto accident
Loss of gear
Poor battlefield (and telephone switchboard) performance
Bad tactical decisions
Poor memory retention
Poor situational awareness
Bad medical treatments provided
Physiological fallout Decreased motivation
Reduced efficiency
Loss of judgment
Increased eye-blinks
Increased eye-closures
Incidents of microsleep: a brief (2-3sec) episode of sleep that occurs in the midst of wakeful activity (e.g., driving!) when tired.
Extreme: hallucination (sailing example)
Animal study: rats prevented from sleeping lower body temperature, increased food intake, increased metabolism, weight loss, breakdown of immune system, eventually death.
Sleep
A highly-motivated and well-trained sailor can develop a
sleep regimen that will allow him or her to remain
competitively efficient while averaging 4.5 hours of actual
sleep (not wake-up & settle-down time) per 24 hour
period.
Sleep
Sleep management (Long Distance Sailing)
• very important to establish REGULAR ROUTINES
• can start the REGULAR ROUTINES while ashore
• REGULAR ROUTINES can use rituals (reading, etc.)
• Sleep "surplus" of stored up sleep is not overly effective (but is of some use)
• Light meals keep alertness up; heavy meals can put you to sleep
• Important to stay hydrated
• Important to be comfortable (minimize disturbances)
• If you have to change watch systems, do so as rarely as possible
• Multiple naps (<50% of normal sleep duration) more effective than one "sleep"
• Nap while you are tired, not exhausted
Consciousness
Sleep
Sleep: the 25 hour day…
Larks vs. Owls
“larks see owls as lazy; owls see larks as party-poopers”
(Coleman)
Morning versus Evening
Person
"If you want to improve your sleep efficiency in a
flexible work situation... determine whether you
are a morning person or an evening person.
Then you must understand how many hours of
sleep you usually require"
Morning/evening person is argued to be a basically
immutable characteristic – Age has only a slight
effect on sleep required (requirement decreases
with age).
Sleep
Morning people
Asleep earlier in the evening (88 min. earlier)
Awaken earlier in the morning (72 min. earlier)
Cognitive performance best in morning
Less flexibility to handle schedule changes or irregular
schedules than evening people
Benefits more from 20-min cat-naps than evening people.
Less able to recover from a sleep-deprived situation
Will do better than night people on morning memory tests
(9AM), but worse on evening memory tests (8PM)
Students do better when their schedules match their sleep
styles
Sleep
Sleep and Dreams
Night Work, Sleeping, and Health
Shift work (rotating day and night shifts) is more dangerous
than night work.
• About 200,000 traffic accidents a year are sleep related.
• Those who drive in the middle of the night take
microsleeps.
• Brief episodes of sleep that occur in the midst of a wakeful
activity.
SleepE
RR
OR
S
Sleep
Psychologists used to believe that dreaming occurred infrequently.
Now they believe that REM sleep and dreaming are biologically adaptive.
• Animal Data
• REM rebound
In fact, there is evidence that they are important for brain maturation.
• In newborns, 50% of sleep is REM sleep.
• Later in childhood and adulthood, about 20% of sleep is REM sleep.
SLEEP
Disorders of sleep
• Insomnia
• Sleep apnea
• Sleepwalking
• Narcolepsy
• Cataplexy (lack of muscle control)
• Hypersomnia (intermittent)
Insomnia
Insomnia
• An inability to fall asleep, stay asleep, or get enough sleep to function during the day
Overcoming insomnia
• Do not nap during the day.
• Avoid alcohol, caffeine, and cigarettes within five hours of bedtime.
• Avoid exercise within two hours of bedtime.
• Keep a rigid schedule.
• If awake and anxious, leave bed and return when sleepy.
Self-Help (Insomnia)
Copyright 2010 The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
Dreaming
Psychoanalytic theory
• Sigmund Freud
• Manifest level
• Surface level, recalled upon waking
• Latent level
• Deeper, unconscious level, where the true meaning lies
Copyright 2010 The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
Dreaming
Biological theory (Brain-Mind State Control)
• AIM theory
• Activation
• Input (In/Out Gating)
• Mode (Modulation)
High NA and
Serotonin
High ACh
Lucid
Dreaming
Copyright 2010 The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
Dreaming
Cognitive theory
• Dreams are not that different from everyday
thinking
• Standard processes used
• Imagery
• Memory
• Speech
• Problem solving
• Lucid dreaming
Hypnosis
Hypnosis: attention-focusing procedure in which changes in
a person’s behavior or mental state are suggested;
Characterized by focused attention, suggestibility,
absorption, lack of voluntary control over behavior, and
suspension of critical faculties.
• hypnotic susceptibility: responsiveness to
hypnosis; can lead to false memory
• hypnotic anesthesia: for those susceptible,
hypnotic state can lead to pain reduction
Hypnosis
The Myths and Realities
Coercion
• Subjects in hypnosis experiments are aware of what they
are doing.
Pain Relief
• Hypnosis can be used to reduce pain in people high in
hypnotic responsiveness.
Posthynoptic Suggestion
• Can be used effectively when coupled with psychotherapy.
• Can dramatically reduce STROOP interference
Memory Enhancement
• This claim is unsubstantiated (changes in criterion for
reporting [“bias”] but not in accuracy [“sensitivity”]).
Hypnosis
McCann & Sheehan (1988)
False memory endorsement
- Robber wearing a mask
- Entry direction (right)
- Swearing
Hypnotic Analgesia
Can Hypnosis Alleviate Pain?
Meditation
MINDFULNESS: a heightened awareness of the
present moment, of events in one’s environment,
and events in one’s own mind.
Mindfulness meditation
• Can improve attentional skills
• Appears to
• Enhance well-being
• Reduce stress
• Decrease depression
• Improve physical health Van Selst (Winter 2009)
Psychoactive Drugs+ Induce an altered state of consciousness.
+ Affects a person’s emotions perceptions behaviors
Addictive Drugs+ Produce dependence
Biological Psychological
+ Withdrawal leads to a craving for the drug that, in some cases may be nearly irresistible.
DRUGS
Any substance that alters conscious experience
Classifications of Drugs
Stimulants: Cocaine, Amphetamines
Depressants:Alcohol, Barbiturates
Narcotics:Heroin, Morphine
Hallucinogens:Cannabis, LSD
Drugs
Sedatives
Alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazepines• Slow down of body function, relaxation, drowsiness, possible depression & loss of
consciousness, bizarre thoughts, suicidal behavior, mood swings, limited attention span, slowed mental and physical functioning
• Risk-taking consequences of alcohol; self-facilitating effect of drinking
Stimulants
Caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, cocaine• Speed up of body functions, alertness, energy, elation, increased confidence,
jitteriness, loss of appetite, irritability, insomnia, delayed orgasm
HallucinogensLSD, Marijuana
• Heightened sensory awareness, distorted perception of time and space, hallucinations, euphoria, increased appetite, disoriented behavior
OpiatesHeroin, morphine, codeine
• Suppressed pain, depressed neural action, relaxation, drowsiness, euphoria, apathy, difficulty concentrating, slowed speech, decreased activity, nausea
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