Consciousness

Question 0

Schneider and shiffrin

Answer 0

Used their research to look at higher level processes that depend on consciousness eg research on understanding conditions under which automatic vs controlled processes operate ie conscious vs non conscious.

Question 1

What did baars say

Answer 1

It is a challenging area
One way to understand it is to contrast conscious and unconscious cognition and use the differences between them to give an insight into consciousness

Question 2

What does it mean cognitive correlations of consciousness?

Answer 2

For exams processes such as selective attention are correlated with conscious awareness of stimuli however this does not help us if fully understanding conscious experiences but do help to gain an insight into the role of consciousness in cognition for example integrating information from different modules and making them available across the cognitive system

Question 3

Definition of consciousness

Answer 3

A feeling of control over our thoughts and behaviour
James said the continuous nature of conscious experience - “stream of consciousness” awareness of ourself and the environment but unaware of use things like sensory input.

Question is it a single thing or many things

Question 4

Block

Answer 4

Consciousness of things in order to understand
Argues there are two aspects to it
Access consciousness, how we name something when we are conscious of it and remember it decide what to do with it we can talk about memories and what we have said we have access to it, he argues that psychology only looks at this side of it
Phenomenal consciousness the experiential aspects of consciousness

Question 5

Chalmers

Answer 5

Makes a distinction between ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ problems of consciousness
Looks at the problem of how the information is shared between modular neural and cognitive systems
Attention, perception etc are easy parts
Hard things are how the consciousness processes things like vision and memory

Question 6

Levine

Answer 6

Argues there is an explanatory gap between cognitive basis and the explanation of the phenomenology
There seems to be nothing in cognitive /neural processes that demand they are accompanied by certain experiances. Even if we did know everything about vision Can we really understand why it feels the way it does when we look at red?

Question 7

The three main arguments from a philosophical approach

Answer 7

Perhaps the reason the cognitive / neural has a gap it because they are separate things
Phenomenal quality - interactions between neurons just coz you imagine a black hot coffe doesn’t turn a part of your brain warm or hot
Intentional - hard to see how the brain states can be about things like mental states - we have to desire something when you desire, you desire something!
Spatial position - neurons are physically located in space but mental entities like beliefs and images do not have spatial positions

Question 8

Dualism

Answer 8

Philosophical approach
Descarters solve the mind body problem by arguing the mind and body are completely separate
There are strong objections to this though for example how would a separate mind and brain interact to guide actions unless thought has a physical aspect to it?

Question 9

Monism

Answer 9

Philosophical approach
means materials, the idea that consciousness is part of the physical brain, so how do they deal with the explanatory gap? say its coz we use non scientific ways like desire and belief should use neuro scientific ways

Question 10

The role of consciousness in cognitive psychology

Answer 10

Consciousness is seen as a variable in cognition eg memory research - the contrast between explicit (conscious) and implicit (non conscious) processing/learning
now it is seen as a variable in psychology meanly in learning and memory

Question 11

functionalists

Answer 11

Philosophical approach
it is at the heart of much cognitive psychology as look at mental functions without to much ref to brain biology
similar to monisms in lots of ways but say mental states are functional or casual states defines by inputs and outputs so conscious states are not just by products of brain states, they cause our behaviour

Question 12

functionalism computer analogy

Answer 12

the brain is the hardware - silicon chips and wires
the mind is computer software sp the mind runs in the physical brain like word processing on a computer
strong AI - the mind could be implemented in something else other than a human brain

Question 13

marcel

Answer 13

says psychology needs to investigate consciousness as it makes mental life interesting and legitimate

Question 14

Banks

Answer 14

says psychologists are still tiptoeing around consciousness as they do not try to fully explain what consciousness is.

Question 15

why look at things like implicit cognition and learning

Answer 15

Because it helps us to define consciousness better by contrasting it with the unconscious

Question 16

what is implicit memory

Answer 16

it is memory without any accompanying sensation of remembering e.g. word stem completion task, these measure memory without asking participants to recall/remember specific stimuli.

Question 17

Eich

Answer 17

Example of implicit memory in absence of explicit memory. gave the participants presentation of words in certain context. word pairs - one of which is less common homophone (it sounded like another word but a different meaning Pane/pain)
conditions were given distraction type task so not attend words. memory for the homophones was tested -recognition tests listen to them and then say them -results - participants do not directly recognise the homophones they had been played but when the homo has ben read out and participants asked to spell them they were biased towards primed by the word pair ie the less common homo. suggests implicit memory without explicit memory is possible

Question 18

Jacoby et al

Answer 18

example of implicit memory
false fame effect- had to say if the names belonged to famous ppl, p’s read 40 non-famous names. 10 mixed with 10 new non-famous names and a recognition test carried out
remaining 30 mixed with 30 new non famous names PLUS 60 famous names. P’s told that the original names were all non famous. fame judgement task carried out in full and divided attention conditions
In divided attention condition, P’s more likely to judge non famous names as famous - feeling of familiarity at work here. however no explicit recognition of names found. in absence of conscious recognition familiar names were assumed to b famous.

Question 19

squire and Mckee

Answer 19

example of implicit memory
replicated Jacoby experiment- used amnesiacs, found that ppl with amnesia performed as well as ppl with normal memory on indirect tests of memory so dispite impared explicit memory they almost had normal implicit memory.- shows have the potential to learn new info even if explicit men is damaged- important as led to errorless learning

Question 20

what is implicit memory like

Answer 20

priming - is the improvement in performance caused by previous exposure to the target stimuli

Question 21

Meyer and schvaneveldt

Answer 21

Implicit memory
showed that participants decided more quickly that pairs of letter strings were two real words when they were related words eg doctor, nurse then unrelated eg doctor cabbage

Question 22

memory and consciousness???

Answer 22

Memory and consciousness appear correlated but direction of causation is unclear

Question 23

Bargh et al

Answer 23

found that words can affect behaviour- “elderly” words used in a word test primes “elderly” behaviour - P’s exposed to these words left the lab more slowly - argues they behaved in accordance to the stereotype they had unknowably been exposed to

Question 24

Neumann and Strack

Answer 24

showed ppl mood can be affected by the moods of others around them

Question 25

Lieberman

Answer 25

argues implicit cog processes such as priming of stereotypes and mood r linked to ‘intuition’ our ability to judge social situations and respond to them without been aware on the information

Question 26

What is implicit learning

Answer 26

learning things without ever being aware of them, if we can see what is possible without consciousness then it can help us understand what is possible with consciousness

Question 27

what is subliminal presentation

Answer 27

like a flash on a screen to quick to notice but it is somehow learned

Question 29

Marcel

Answer 29

implicit learning, subliminal, presentation of the word ‘doctor’ identified faster then the word nurse. this is a controversial study findings have not been replicated and what counts as subliminal, however does ilk in well with the cocktail party effect, by moray

Question 30

Reber

Answer 30

demonstrated implicit learning of an artificial grammar by using supraliminal (for long enough that they can be perceived) presentation, ppl can learn hidden rules- cannot verbalise it but allows them to distinguish between new grammatical sentences from ungrammatical ones 79% success rate

Knowlton et al found amnesiac patients can do this too

Question 31

Nissen and Bullemer

Answer 31

tested implicit learning
amnesiacs
watch panel of lights, if on press the key under it
fixed order = faster RT but when the random order = even faster RT, BUT amnesiacs had no awareness of the first sequence= shows implicit learning

Question 32

Crits of implicit learning

Answer 32

-no way to determine a p’s awareness if ask them they will become aware
-In the study by REBER knowing how some of the grammatical strings start may be enough to improve ppl guess above chance level
SHANKS AND ST JOHN say info and sensitivity criterion must b used to demonstrate learning has really occurred from implicit knowledge.

Question 33

Deeprose et al

Answer 33

said coz it is so hard to look at a p’s awareness test them while asleep for implicit learning (however what about the degree of unconscious, EEG would tell us))
words eg tractor played to p’s while they were under anaesthetic. tests after showed some implicit memory = memories can b primed in an unconscious P. next step would b to show new info can b learned under such conditions

Question 34

what is controlled processing

Answer 34

we are controlling our processing, like revising, reading I am controlling it it is not automatic

Question 35

What do schneider and shiffrin say about control and automatic

Answer 35

say that automatic process operate on LTM but for control STM is required

activation of a novel sequence requires attention so limits us to one task at once but we have control
-used target search task -
Consistant mapping 1st results = fast RT
9 4 N P (-VE FRAME) N 4 (+VE FRAME)
7 2 * * * *
varied mapping 2nd results = slower RT
Z K N P (-ve frame) N K (+ve frame)
W H W H
Showed diff RT for diff conditions
Q- if consciousness is what we use to control behaviour or is it that we become conscious of our behaviour

Question 36

neuropsychologyical view

Answer 36

other studies imply consciousness is modular however brain imaging show conscious activity just shows a subset of regions that r activated e.g. in unilateral neglect patients, lack consciousness on one side of space.

Question 37

Zeki and ffytche

Answer 37

used hindsight patient GY used fMRI Compared brain activity with and without consciously reported perception, used fast and slow moving stimuli on the motion cortex but more for fast moving stimuli
so consciousness of visual stimuli associated with more activity in the motion cortex= specialised brain area rather then a general consciousness centre

Question 38

what is blindsight

Answer 38

is a disorder from brain damage leading to blindness in part of the visual field

Question 39

what do we learn from the work on automatic and controlled processes

Answer 39

shows that automatic or unconscious processes tend to b fast and efficient but inflexible

attention is needed for selection to occur