Conciousness Flashcards
What is consciousness?
The subjective awareness of mental events.
Being aware of internal and external stimuli.
How did James describe consciousness?
A constantly moving stream of thoughts, feelings and perceptions. The consciousness of the self, any conscious thought is accompanied by the thought that the self is the author.
Discuss the two primary functions of consciousness-monitor and control?
To monitor mental events from the self and the environment.
To regulate thoughts and behaviors.
What are states of consciousness?
Qualitatively different patterns of subjective experience including ways of experiencing both internal and external events.
What is attention?
Where we focus our conscious awareness.
It is a filter in which important information passes.
Guided by external stimuli which leads us to relevant sensory information and activated goals.
What does the cocktail party syndrome highlight?
The implicit processing of allot more information that what our consciousness receives.
What are the three functions of attention?
Orientating to sensory stimuli.
Controlling behavior and the contents of consciousness.
Maintaining alertness.
What is divided attention?
The process of splitting attentions between two tasks.
One task can be controlled automatically (automatisation).
How do researchers examine the phenomenom on divided attention?
Dichotic listening tracks.
What is daydreaming?
Tuning attention away from external stimulus into internal thoughts and imagined scenario.
A major part of the normal flow of consciousness.
What three systems comprise consciousness according to Freud?
Conscious
Preconscious
Unconscious
According to Freud what is the conscious system of consciousness?
Mental events of which you are aware.
The subjective awareness of stimuli.
According to Freud what is the preconscious system of consciousness?
Mental events that can be brought into awareness.
According to Freud what is the unconscious system of consciousness?
Mental events that are inaccessible to awareness.
Events actively kept out of awareness.
Repressed as they are anxiety provoking.
What is the basis of psychoanalysis?
Exploring the unconscious.
How did Freud see consciousness.
Like a censor, censoring unwanted or unhappy information in the unconscious.
What is dynamically unconscious?
Kept unconscious for a reason,
The regulating of emotions.
Many other processes are not harmful however.
What does the psychodynamic perspective maintain?
That motivational and emotional processes can also be unconscious.
People can respond to people or situations without knowing why.
What is subliminal perception?
The perception of stimuli below the threshold of consciousness.
How do cognitive psychologists view conscious and unconscious processes?
Unconscious cognitive and perceptual processes can influence behavior.
What is the cognitive unconscious?
Consciousness is comprised of information processing mechanisms that operate outside of awareness (Implicit memory)
Occurring implicitly in the subconscious regardless of motivation.
Paralleled by multiple networks.
What do information processing models now distinguish.
Explicit memory (conscious) Implicit memory (unconscious) Cognition (such as conscious problem solving as apposed to automatic unconscious heuristics)
What do connectionist models propose?
Information processing occurs at the same time in the brain in multiple quite separate networks which are mostly in the unconscious.
What is preconscious awareness?
Associations that are activated below the threshold of consciousness (eg: stereotypes when we meet people.)
