PSY 1101 Lecture 4: Chapter 3 Consciousness

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Mark Dallas

Document Summary

Consciousness - our awareness of ourselves and our environment. States can occur: spontaneously: daydreaming, drowsiness, dreaming, physiologically: hallucinations, orgasm, food or oxygen starvation. Bring on willingly: psychologically: sensory deprivation, hypnosis, meditation. Levels of consciousness: minimal consciousness - low-level sensory awareness: the mind inputs sensations and may output behaviour. Auto pilot: full consciousness - you know and are able to report your mental state, self-consciousness - attention is drawn to the self as an object almost completely. 4 key properties of consciousness: intentionality - consciousness is about something, unity - consciousness resists being divided. We make things conscious by paying attention to a few things in a full world, remain unaware of much that is going on. There are so many stimuli and we have a very limited capacity. Dual processing & the two-track mind - how we do/do not pay attention. Dual processing - information is simultaneously processed on separate conscious and unconscious levels.