Gen Psych - Consciousness part 1

Consciousness

Part 1

Lesson Coverage

• Consciousness overview

• Consciousness and brain activity

• Consciousness and attention

• Unconscious processing

• Consciousness and sleep

  • Sleep stages

Consciousness

The combination of a person’s subjective experience of the external world and the person’s internal mental activity.

Instrospection

• Through the method of introspection, research participants analyze their personal experiences and describe them to the researcher.

• Problems:

  • It is subjective.

  • It is unique to each person.

Level of Consciousness

• Conscious: Awareness of the external world and inner mental activity

• Unconscious: Lack of awareness of the external world and inner mental activity

State of Consciousness

• Normal waking state of consciousness: reflects a clear awareness of the external world and inner mental activity.

• Altered state of consciousness: deviates from a normal waking state of consciousness and may reflect either a more vivid awareness or a less clear awareness of the external world and inner mental activity.

Consciousness results from brain activity

• Consciousness is a product of activity in specific brain regions.

  • The key idea of the global workspace model is that no single area of the brain is responsible for general “awareness.”

  • Processing in specific brain areas produces conscious experience.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

• Severe concussions can cause traumatic brain injury (TBI).

• There are long-term effects of concussions, like increased risks of multiple sclerosis for adolescents who experience concussions.

• Females are more vulnerable to concussion and have worse outcomes than males.

Coma

• People in comas have sleep/wake cycles—they open their eyes and appear to be awake—but generally do not respond to their surroundings.

• Some people in comas are in a minimally conscious state; they are able to understand language and mental activity, but they cannot make their bodies respond.

• When a coma lasts more than a month, the
  person is said to have unresponsive
  wakefulness syndrome.

Consciousness involves attention

• Attention and consciousness in the two-track mind

  • Attention is the focusing of mental resources on specific information to become consciously aware of that information.

  • Attention involves automatic processing and controlled processing.

Fast and does not require a lot of mental resources

Controlled processing

Automatic Processing

consciousness involves attention

Slow and requires more mental resources

Consciousness involves attention

• Multitasking

  • Attention can be divided.

  • But divided attention is limited.

Consciousness involves attention

• Limited attention affects consciousness.

  • If the person you were talking to suddenly changed into another person, would you notice?

  • Simons and Levin (1998) demonstrated the phenomenon known as inattentional blindness—a failure to be aware of visual information when one’s attention is directed elsewhere.

Unconscious processing

Sigmund Freud theorized that much of human behavior is determined by mental processes operating below the level of conscious awareness.

Unconscious processing in subliminal perception

• Subliminal perception: The processing of information by sensory systems without a person’s conscious awareness.

• Though material presented subliminally can influence how people process information, it has little or no effect on complex thinking and actions.

Can subliminal messages impact you?

Can you find the subliminal message in this ad?

Can subliminal messages impact you?

Subliminal perception of messages in ads and backmasked music can’t affect long-term, complex behavior.

However, they may unconsciously affect us, so we choose words or images associated with those messages out of a list.

Unconscious processing

Subliminal messages in advertising

• Though material presented subliminally can influence how people process information, it has little or no effect on complex thinking and actions.

• Evidence suggests that subliminal messages have quite small effects on purchasing behaviors.

Consciousness changes during sleep

• Circadian rhythms are the regulation of biological cycles into regular, daily patterns.

• Changes in light register in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus, which triggers the
  production of the hormone melatonin.

• Bright light reduces melatonin and
  darkness increases its production.

Consciousness changes during sleep

• The electroencephalograph (EEG) records electrical brain activity during different stages of sleep.

Consciousness changes during sleep

• Over the course of a typical night, we cycle through the stages of sleep about five times.

Consciousness changes during sleep

• Stage N1 sleep begins when sleepers drift off and is shown on the EEG as theta waves. Some individuals may experience hypnic jerks.

Consciousness changes during sleep

• In Stage N2 sleep, breathing becomes more regular, and sleepers become less sensitive to external stimulation.

  • EEGs show bursts of brain activity called sleep spindles and spikes called K-complexes.

Consciousness changes during sleep

• Stage N3 sleep (slow-wave sleep): In stages 3 and 4 of deep sleep, sleepers are hard to wake, and EEGs reveal large, regular delta waves.

Consciousness changes during sleep

• Stage R or REM sleep: Sleepers experience rapid eye movements, dreaming, and paralysis of motor systems (paradoxical - active brain but inactive body); EEGs show beta wave activity, which is associated with an awake, alert mind.

Brain activity during REM sleep

During REM sleep, the motor cortex, the brain stem, and visual association areas are active. So is the amygdala, which is involved in emotion.

The prefrontal cortex is less active.

Attention / Comprehension check Questions

6 questions @ 1 point each
5 points total (so you can miss 1 and still get full points)

Multiple Choice

Dhara knows the capitals of all the countries of the world, but she was not thinking about them until her geography teacher asked her to name the capital of Estonia, and she was able to answer “Tallinn.” For Dhara, the name of Estonia's capital moved from the __________ level to the __________ level of awareness.

• conscious; unconscious

• controlled; automatic

• automatic; controlled

• unconscious; conscious

Multiple Choice

Which of the following is most likely to result from flashing a Coke bottle on a movie theater screen too briefly for a viewer to notice?

• There is going to be no effect, because the viewer is unaware of the event.

• There will be faster recognition of related words only if the viewer is in an altered state.

• The viewer may recognize related words (e.g., “soda”) more quickly on an immediate test.

• With repeated exposure, the viewer will drink more Coke.

Multiple Choice

Connie has just fallen asleep and is still in Stage 1 sleep. If Connie were connected to an EEG, the recording would show the presence of:

• alpha waves

• theta waves

• delta waves

• gamma waves

Multiple Choice

Which best explains the “paradoxical” aspect of REM sleep?

• Brain is in an active state

• Dreaming occurs, but body cannot move.

• Muscles are paralyzed, but brain is in an active state. 

• Brain is highly active, and body is highly active as well.

Multiple Choice

• When _______ lasts more than a month, the person is said to have unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.

• a coma

• REM sleep

• inattentional blindness

• hypnic jerks

Multiple Choice

Which neural region is highly active during REM and likely contributes to the emotional content of dreams?

• Prefrontal cortex

• Motor cortex

• Visual cortex

• Amygdala

Coming up...

We'll continue with our coverage of consciousness on Thursday. No assignments between now and then...

See you Thursday!