Chapter 8:
Consciousness
Slides prepared by
Randall E. Osborne, Texas State University-San Marcos,
adapted by Dr Mark Forshaw, Staffordshire University, UK
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Conscious and
Unconscious: The Mind’s
Eye, Open and Closed
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Conscious and Unconscious
• Consciousness
– Not just ‘being awake’ but maybe ‘being aware’
• Cartesian theatre
– ‘Mind’s eye’ or a ‘mental screen’
• Phenomenology
– The study of how things seem and are experienced
• Problem of other minds
– You can’t get inside someone else’s mind
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Mind/Body Problem
• Examines how mind related to brain
and body
• Descartes
• Research suggests brain activity
precedes activities of conscious mind
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Nature of Consciousness
• Four basic properties:
– intentionality
– unity
– selectivity
dichotic listening
cocktail party phenomenon
– transience
Necker cube
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Levels of Consciousness
• Minimal consciousness
– Sensory awareness
• Full consciousness
– You know and can report your mental state
• Self-consciousness
– mirror image
– You recognise a ‘self’ that is you and refer to
‘I’
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Contents of Consciousness
• What’s on your mind?
• Think aloud
• Experience sampling
technique
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Contents of Consciousness
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Contents of Consciousness
• Mental control
– Ironic processes of
mental control
• Thought suppression
• Rebound effect of
thought suppression
• Dynamic unconscious
• Repression
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The Unconscious Mind
• Many mental processes are unconscious
• Freudian unconscious
– dynamic unconscious
– repression
– “Freudian” slips
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Cognitive Unconscious
• Cognitive
unconscious
• Subliminal perception
• Passing exposure
(like priming)
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Attention
• Selective attention
• Early versus late selection: do you
select early in the process, or later on?
– Information bottleneck
– Early filter model
– Attenuation model
– Response selection model
– Load model
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Disorders of Attention
• Unilateral visual neglect
– Missing objects from the opposite visual field
from the lesion
• Balint’s syndrome
– Cannot shift attention to new locations
• Blindsight
– Helen the monkey
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Sleep and Dreaming:
Good Night, Mind
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Sleep and Dreaming
• Hypnagogic
state
• Hypnic jerk
• Sleep cycle
– EEG
– EOG
– REM increases
throughout
night
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Sleep
• Sleep needs and deprivation
• How much sleep do people need?
• Why do we need sleep?
– NREM and REM sleep may give us hints
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Sleep Disorders
• Insomnia
– people overestimate their insomnia
• Sleep apnea
• Somnambulism
– more common in children
– tends to happen early in night (usually in slow wave
sleep)
• Narcolepsy
• Sleep paralysis
• Night terrors (happen most in NREM sleep)
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Dreams
• Dream consciousness
–
–
–
–
–
Intense emotion
Illogical thought
Full sensation
Uncritical acceptance
Difficulty remembering on wakening
• Nightmares
– average undergrad has 24 nightmares per
year
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Dream Theories
• Freud’s theory — dream work
– manifest content
– latent content
• Wegner, Wenzlaff, & Kozak (2004) dream
suppression study
• Activation-synthesis model
– dreams produced when mind tries to make
sense of neural activity during sleep
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Drugs and
Consciousness:
Artificial Inspiration
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Drugs and Consciousness
• Psychoactive drugs
– Influence brain chemistry and alter
consciousness
• Drug use and abuse
– Hallucinogens
• Alter sensation and perception
– Cannabis
• Affects co-ordination, addiction potential low
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Hypnosis: Open to Suggestion
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Hypnosis
• Induction
– Mesmer—“animal magentism”
• Susceptibility
• Hypnotic effects
– hypnotized versus those told to fake it
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Hypnosis
• Posthypnotic amnesia
• Hypnotic analgesia
• Brain activity during
hypnosis
– right anterior cingulate
cortex
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Meditation and
Religious
Experiences: Higher
Consciousness
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Meditation and Religious
Experiences
• Meditation
– alpha waves
– low levels of activation on posterior superior
parietal lobe
• Ecstatic religious experiences
– 40% of Americans report at least one such
experience
– right anterior temporal lobe
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