PSY 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Embalming, Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, Pineal Gland
Chapter 3: Consciousness
• Consciousness
o What is consciousness?
o A slippery concept, which psychologists have tried to define for more than a
etur…Willia Jaes
o Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.
o States of Consciousness
o Some occur spontaneously: daydreaming, drowsiness, dreaming.
o Some are psychologically induced: Hallucinations, orgasm, food or oxygen starvation,
sensory deprivation, hypnosis, meditation
o There is also some agreement on what some of the key functions consciousness
seres… (control thoughts, achieve goals, etc.)
o The Brain and Consciousness
o Cognitive Neuroscience- the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with our
mental processes, including consciousness.
o Brain activity in a patient showing no outward signs of conscious awareness after being
asked to imagine playing tennis and moving around her home.
o Dual Processing
o Perception, memory, thinking, language, and most all other aspects of psychological
futioig operate o to leels…
o The High Road- conscious, deliberate processing, of which we are aware
o The Lo Road- unconscious, automatic processing, of which we are unaware.
o One of the first psychologists to recognize this was Sigmund Freud. Freud argued that
much of our behavior is driven by unconscious drives.
o Patients with a condition called blindsight have no awareness whatsoever of any stimuli-
like the square above-but are able to process aspects of a visual stimulus, such as
location(Did the object appear to the left or to the right)
o Selective Attention
o Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid
form of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of
thoughts. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies
withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition
which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed scatterbrained state which in French is
alled distratio… (- William James)
o Selection Attention is a mental spotlight that fouses osious aareess o a er
limited aspect of all that your experience.
o Imagine trying to study for this course in a busy coffee shop. Selective attention is what
allos ou to oetrate o hat ou’re trig to stud ad to filter our irrelevant
sights and sounds.
o Inattentional Blindness
o If we are distracted, we can miss things that happen right before our eyes, a
phenomenon called inattentional blindness
o Change Blindness
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
It is taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. Imagine trying to study for this course in a busy coffee shop. Selective attention is what allo(cid:449)s (cid:455)ou to (cid:272)o(cid:374)(cid:272)e(cid:374)trate o(cid:374) (cid:449)hat (cid:455)ou"re tr(cid:455)i(cid:374)g to stud(cid:455) a(cid:374)d to filter our irrelevant sights and sounds. A person who is daydreaming shows theta activity: stages 3-4: during deepest sleep, brain activity slows down. There are large-amplitude, slow delta: stage 5: after reaching the deepest sleep stage (4), the sleep cycle starts moving backward towards stage 1. Although still asleep, the brain engages in low-amplitude, fast and regular beta waves, much like awake-aroused state: dreams can occur in any sleep stage, but the most vivid dreams are reported in stage 5 (rem (rapid eye movement)).
