Psychology Chapter 5
Consciousness
Assignment
 Keep a dream journal for 10 days to
see what you can remember.
Study of consciousness
 Construct
 Concept used to talk about something
we cannot see, touch, or measure
directly
 Examples
 Intelligence, emotions, consciousness
 Consciousness tends to mean awareness
Types of Consciousness
 Consciousness of sensory awareness
 sounds or smell around you
 Selective attention- Focusing on
particular stimulus Watching TV and Studying
 Teenage Brains:
 Can they multitask?, Digital Natives
 Experiment
 Pick out the speech of an individual in a
crowded room with everyone talking.
 Consciousness as direct inner
awareness
 Imagination….. Trip to the lake
 Consciousness as sense of self
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Young child “ Name wants milk”
how we exist in the world
Matrix ????
Men in Black
Levels of consciousness
 Preconscious level
 not aware of right now but can be
thought of in an instant
 Unconscious level
 Not available in most instances, gut
feeling on things???
 Sigmund Freud
 Non-conscious level
 internal organs working, fingernails
growing, judging distance, shapes
 Altered states of consciousness
 sleep, drugs, hypnosis
Sleep and dreams
 Circadian rhythms24 hours long
 Stages of sleepMeasured by EEG
Brain wave patterns
 Beta
 When we are awake and alert, short and
quick
 Alpha
 When brain waves slow and we start to
relax
 Theta
 First stages of sleep, slower waves
 Delta
 Deepest level of sleep, very slow waves
Stages of Sleep
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Stage 1Stage 2Stage 3Stage 4REM- Rapid eye movement
 Chart 108
Sleep Facts
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Sleep facts Next slides
Sleeping and coffee
Sleeping and Alcohol
Sleep and Driving
 What is the good habits of sleep?
 Why is it difficult to accomplish?
Interesting Sleep Facts
 Ducks at risk of attack by predators
are able to balance the need for sleep
and survival, keeping one half of the
brain awake while the other slips into
sleep mode
 A new baby typically results in 400-750
hours lost sleep for parents in the first
year –
 REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling
about 2 hours a night, usually beginning
about 90 minutes after falling asleep.
 - Dreams, once thought to occur only
during REM sleep, also occur (but to a
lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases.
It's possible there may not be a single
moment of our sleep when we are
actually dreamless.
 Seventeen hours of sustained
wakefulness leads to a decrease in
performance equivalent to a blood
alcohol-level of 0.05%.
 - The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off
Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle
disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear
accident have all been attributed to
human errors in which sleepdeprivation played a role.
 The NRMA estimates fatigue is
involved in one in 6 fatal road
accidents
 - It's impossible to tell if someone is
really awake without close medical
supervision. People can take cat naps
with their eyes open without even
being aware of it.
 - Anything less than five minutes to
fall asleep at night means you're
sleep deprived. The ideal is between
10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're
still tired enough to sleep deeply, but
not so exhausted you feel sleepy by
day
 Experts say one of the most alluring
sleep distractions is the 24-hour
accessibility of the internet.
 - The extra-hour of sleep received
when clocks are put back at the start
of daylight in Canada has been found
to coincide with a fall in the number
of road accidents
 -The record for the longest period
without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours,
40 minutes during a rocking chair
marathon. The record holder reported
hallucinations, paranoia, blurred
vision, slurred speech and memory
and concentration lapses
 - After five nights of partial sleep
deprivation, three drinks will have the
same effect on your body as six
would when you've slept enough.
 Some of the more scientific explanations of
why we yawn are caused by physical needs.
One likely explanation is that the yawning
reflex is triggered when our blood needs
more oxygen. The deep breath helps
replenish the levels of oxygen in our blood.
Another common theory is that the yawn
help regulate our body temperature. Other
hypotheses suggest that the same
chemicals in our brain that affect our
moods and emotions cause us to yawn.
 Interesting Yawning Facts
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* The average yawn lasts about six
seconds.
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* Your heart rate can rise as much as 30
percent during a yawn.
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* 55 percent of people will yawn within
five minutes of seeing someone else yawn.
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* Blind people yawn more after hearing
an audio tape of people yawning.
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* Reading about yawning will make you
yawn.
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* Olympic athletes often yawn before
competition.
Sleep facts
 We go through the stages an average
of 5 times
 Bodies are paralyzed (most of the
time)
 Each cycle lasts about 90 minutes
 REM becomes longer closer to
morning
 Each cycle is shorter in time.
Why do we sleep?
 Rest, stress reliever, immune system
 Will change the aging process if you
don’t get enough sleep
 Need 8 hours a night?
 Can you catch up on your sleep?
 Polyphasic Sleep
Micro sleep
 Microsleeps are brief, unintended episodes of loss of
attention associated with events such as blank stare,
head snapping, prolonged eye closure, etc., which
may occur when a person is fatigued but trying to stay
awake to perform a monotonous task like driving a car
or watching a computer screen.4
 Microsleep episodes last from a few seconds to several
minutes, and often the person is not aware that a
microsleep has occurred. In fact, microsleeps often
occur when a person's eyes are open.
 While in a microsleep, a person fails to respond to
outside information. A person will not see a red signal
light or notice that the road has taken a curve.
 Microsleeps are most likely to occur at certain times of
the day, such as pre-dawn hours and mid-afternoon
hours when the body is "programmed" to sleep.
Dreams
 Lucid Dreams- Know that you are
dreaming
 Freuds dreams- dreams reflect a
persons unconscious wishes and
urges. “wishes your heart
makes”
Biological Approach
 When neurons fire in the brain- our
brain likes to make sense of
everything so it makes up dreams to
make sense of it.
Dreams interpretation
http://www.dreammoods.com/
http://www.dreammoods.com/
dreamdictionary/
http://petrix.com/dreams/ever
ything.html
Sleep problems
 Insomnia
 34-42 billion spent on sleep aides
 Nightmares
 Not deep stages
 Remember them
 Night terrors deep stage of sleep
 Can’t remember
 younger /
 Sleep walking- Sleepwalkers are not conscious of their
actions on a level where memory of the sleepwalking
episode can be recalled, and because of this, unless the
sleepwalker is woken or aroused by someone else, this
sleep disorder can go unnoticed. Sleepwalking is more
commonly experienced in people with high levels of
stress, anxiety or other psychological factors and in
people with genetic factors (family history) or sometimes
a combination of both.
 18% of the world's population is prone to sleepwalking
 Sleep talking-Sleep talking or somniloquy, refers to any
utterance made during sleep, and may range from a
single word to entire sentences. Although sleep-talking
episodes vary, a person typically starts while in deep sleep
or NREM. Sleep talking can, however, happen during REM
sleep too. It can be initiated by stress or illnesses and is
relatively harmless, although disturbing to roommates.
 Sleep apneais a sleep disorder
characterized by pauses in breathing during
sleep. These episodes, called apneas
(literally, "without breath"), each last long
enough so one or more breaths are missed,
and occur repeatedly throughout sleep. The
standard definition of any apneic event
includes a minimum 10 second interval
between breaths, with either a neurological
arousal
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qQtDD
O1gPY&feature=related
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QcmK
24ZNyQ&feature=related
Meditation
 narrow their consciousness so that
the stresses of the outside world fade
away.
Biofeedback
 System that provides information
about something happening in the
body.
Hypnosis
 Altered state of consciousness during
which people respond to suggestions and
behave as if in a trance.
Hypnotize
Effectiveness of hypnosis
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Memory- lose or gain?
Pain prevention
Habits
Dangerous suggestions
Drugs and consciousness
 Addiction
 After taking a drug for a while their
body craves the drug just to feel
normal.
Depressants
 Alcohol
 Intoxication-1/2 traffic deaths
 Narcotics- numbness or stupor
 Heroine, morphine, codeine
Ten warning signs of alcoholism
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1. Drinking alone
2. Making excuses, finding excuses to drink
3. Daily or frequent drinking needed to function
4. Inability to reduce or stop alcohol intake
5. Violent episodes associated with drinking
6. Drinking secretly
7. Becoming angry when confronted about drinking
8. Poor eating habits
9. Failure to care for physical appearance
10. Trembling in the morning
Stimulants
 Nicotine- 400,000 die
 birth defects
 second hand smoke
 50,000 deaths each year
 Narcotics- numbness or stupor
 Heroine, morphine, codeine
 Crack Cocaine
 Meth
Amphetamines
 uppers, speed-effects of the drug?
Hallucination
 perception of an object or sound that
seems real but is not
 Delusion- false thought or idea that
seems real.
Cocaine
 What are the effects of this drug?
Hallucinogens
 Marijuana what are the effects of the
drug
 LSD-effects?
Drug treatment
 Detoxification
 Maintenance programs
 Counseling support groups.