5. Consciousness Flashcards
(22 cards)
What is consciousness?
A person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind
What is phenomenology?
How things seem to the conscious person
What is the problem of other minds?
The fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others
Only you know what it is like to be
What happened on the survey to compare minds of 13 targets?
People judge minds according to the capacity for experience and agency
Baby little agency, lots of experience
PVS man little agency or experience
What did Behaviourism add to consciousness?
Eliminate consciousness from psychology entirely
What is the mind-body problem?
How mind is related to body
When a person decides to move, when does the brain show activity?
Before the conscious decision to move
What are the four basic properties of consciousness?
- Intentionality: direction
- Unity: resistance to division
- Selectivity: include some not others
- Transience: stream
What are three levels of consciousness?
- Minimal: sleep turning over
- Full: aware of having mental state
- Self: focus on self
How to know what’s on people’s minds?
Think aloud Report conscious experiences Current concerns Daydreaming Default network
What is the default network?
Areas of the brain that are activated when people work on a mental task they know well when they’re not busy
What is mental control?
Attempt to change conscious states of mind
What is thought suppression?
Conscious avoidance of a thought
Rebound effect of suppression
Tendency of a suppressed though to return to consciousness with greater frequency
What are Ironic processes of mental control?
Ironic errors occur because the mental process that monitors errors can itself produce them
What is Freud’s dynamic unconscious?
An active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, deep instincts and inner struggle to control them
What is repression?
Removing unacceptable thoughts from consciousness
What is posthypnotic amnesia?
Failure to retrieve memories following hypnotic suggestions to forget
True or false: only memories that were lost under hypnosis can be retrieved through hypnosis
True
What is hypnotic analgesia?
Reduction of pain through hypnosis
What is the Stroop task? How can it be done under hypnosis?
Naming colours in other colours
Hypnotized people had no trouble doing it
How do the brains of hypnotized people look when asked to see colour?
Regions of the brain responsible for colour vision activated when hypnotized people were asked to perceive colour, even when shown gray stimuli
Decreased activity in anterior cingulate cortex, part of the brain in conflict monitoring
