PowerPoint Presentations for
Psychology
The Science of
Behavior
Seventh Edition
Neil R. Carlson,
Harold Miller, C. Donald Heth,
John W. Donahoe, and
G. Neil Martin
Prepared by Linda Fayard
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College
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Copyright © 2010 Allyn & Bacon
Chapter 9
Consciousness
Copyright © 2010 Allyn & Bacon
Consciousness
1. Consciousness as a LanguageDependent Phenomenon
2. Selective Attention
3. Consciousness and the Brain
4. Hypnosis
5. Sleep
Copyright © 2010 Allyn & Bacon
Consciousness as a LanguageDependent Phenomenon
F 9.1

The Adaptive Significance of
Consciousness

Consciousness and the Ability to
Communicate

Does Conscious Thought Control
Behavior?
Copyright © 2010 Allyn & Bacon
The Adaptive Significance of
Consciousness
 Consciousness is the awareness of mental
processes such as perception, thinking, and
remembering, not the processes themselves
 Consciousness is not a single condition but
consists of distinguishable states
 Consciousness also endows us with selfawareness
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Consciousness and the Ability to
Communicate
 Our ability to communicate helped give rise
to consciousness
 How does communication give rise to
consciousness?
 Must be able to translate private events into
language
 Our words must have an effect on the person
receiving them
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Selective Attention
 Auditory Information
 Visual Information
 Brain Mechanisms of Selective Attention
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Auditory Information
Figure 9.2: Models of Selective Attention in
the Dichotic Listening Task
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Figure 9.3: Shadowing a Message
That Switches Ears
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Auditory Information
 The cocktail party phenomenon
 We can follow a particular conversation
even when other conversations are
going on around us
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Visual Information
 We can successfully attend either to the
location of the information or to the nature of
the information (revealed by its physical
features, such as form or color)
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Visual Information
 Location as a Cue for Selective Attention
 Inhibition of Return
 Inattention Blindness
 Change Blindness
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Consciousness and the Brain
 Isolation Aphasia: A Case of Global
Unawareness
 Visual Agnosia: Lack of Awareness of Visual
Perceptions
 The Split-Brain Syndrome
Copyright © 2010 Allyn & Bacon
Isolation Aphasia: A Case of Global
Unawareness
 A language disturbance in which a person is
unable to comprehend speech or to produce
meaningful speech but is able to repeat
speech and to learn new sequences of
words.
 Geschwind, Quadfasel, and Segarra (1968)
Copyright © 2010 Allyn & Bacon
Visual Agnosia: Loss of Awareness of
Visual Perceptions
F 9.10
Figure 9.8: Hypothetical Exchanges of
Information within the Brain of a Patient with
Visual Agnosia
F 9.10
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The Split-Brain Syndrome
Figure 9.9: Identification of an Object by a
Person with a Split Brain in Response to an
Olfactory Stimulus
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Hypnosis
 A specific and unusual form of verbal control
that apparently enables one person to
control some of the behavior of another
person
 Once hypnotized, people are very
suggestible
 Not all people can be hypnotized
 Frank Anton Mesmer
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Characteristics of Hypnosis
 Three Types of Suggestions
 Ideomotor – suggestions that a particular action will
occur without awareness of voluntary action
 Challenge – suggestions that the hypnotized individual
will be unable to perform a normally voluntary action
 Cognitive – suggestions that the hypnotized person is
undergoing sensory or cognitive distortions
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Figure 9.11: The Ponzo Illusion and
Hypnotic Blindness
The short horizontal lines are the same length. Even when a
hypnotic suggestion made the slanted lines disappear, the
visual system still perceived the illusion
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Sleep
 The Stages of Sleep
 Functions of Sleep
 Dreaming
 Disorders of Sleep
 Brain Mechanisms of Sleep
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The Stages of Sleep
 Stage 1 – Theta activity
 Stage 2 – Theta activity and K complexes
 Stages 3 and 4 – Delta activity; Slow-wave
sleep
 REM Sleep – Deep sleep characterized by
rapid eye movements
F 9.12
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Functions of Sleep
 Sleep as Repair – serves to repair the wear
and tear on our bodies caused by moving
and exercising
 Sleep and Learning – aids in the
consolidation of long-term memories
 Horne and Minard (1985)
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Dreaming
 Consciousness during Sleep
 Night Terrors
 Sleepwalking
 Functions of dream
 Psychological analysis of the content of dreams
– Freud
 Cognitive neuroscientific research – product of
brain’s information processing
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Dreaming
 Theories
 Dreaming as Wish Fulfillment (Freud)
 Dreaming as Story Construction (Hobson and
Pacec-Schott)
 Dreaming as Learning
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Disorders of Sleep
 Insomnia
 Difficulty in falling or remaining asleep
 Narcolepsy
 Irresistibly falling asleep at the wrong time
 REM Sleep Behavior
 Fail to exhibit paralysis during REM sleep
 Problems Associated with Slow-Wave Sleep
 Bedwetting
 Sleepwalking
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Brain Mechanisms of Sleep
 The Circadian Clock
 Circadian Rhythms – daily rhythmical change in
behaviors or physiological processes
 Suprachiasmatic nuclei – area of hypothalamus
that provides a biological clock for circadian
rhythms
 Neural Control of Sleep
 Preoptic area – area of hypothalamus that
inhibits arousal neurons to produce sleep
 Adenosine – activates neurons to induce sleep
Copyright © 2010 Allyn & Bacon