W10: Conscious and Unconscious Thought

Question 1

Consciousness

Answer 1

A state of awareness of sensations or ideas, such that you can reflect on those sensations and ideas, and can (in many cases) report to others that you’re aware of the sensations and ideas.

Researchers still disagree about how consciousness should be defined, and this definition has problems - but it’s a good start.

Question 2

Cognitive unconscious

Answer 2

The broad set of mental activities of which we are completely unaware, that make cognition possible / make possible your ordinary interactions with the world.

Occurs outside of consciousness for efficiency (rather than repressing, as Freud thought).

These processes are sophisticated and powerful - and it’’s actually quite helpful that a lot of mental work can take place without conscious supervision.

Question 3

Conscious Products

Answer 3

Beliefs you’ve formed, conclusions you’ve reached. The result of (unconscious) processes. We’re often aware of our mental products.

Question 4

Unconscious Processes

Answer 4

The steps leading to a conclusion which are hidden from view - eg. memory retrieval/ spreading activation, inference or assumptions.

Most of our unconscious processes are strongly guided by the situation, environment, and context that we’re in, or by our prior habits.

Question 5

Memory Errors

Answer 5

Memory errors are often undetectable, because the process that brings you a “memory” is unconscious - you can’t distinguish genuine recall from (potentially misguided) assumption.

A sense of “knowing” your own thoughts may, in many cases, be an illusion.

Question 6

Freud’s Unconscious

Answer 6

Freud believed that the unconscious contained all sorts of significant and disturbing material that we need to keep out of awareness because the information is just too threatening to fully acknowledge.

Question 7

Unconscious Attributions

Answer 7

Attributing (assigning as a cause) one thing to another thing unconsciously.

Example: Nisbett & Schacter’s 1966 experiment.
Participants incorrectly attributed symptoms/ somatic markers to a pill (a placebo) rather than to electric shocks unconsciously, because they were advised that the pill would cause like-symptoms.

Question 8

After-the-fact Reconstructions

Answer 8

When something happens, we think of an explanation for it which sometimes has nothing to do with why it happened in the first place. The reconstruction feels genuine.

Example: Nisbett & Wilson’s 1977 experiment.

When participants were asked to select the best pair of (identical) stockings, a strong position effect occurred; items on the right-hand side, which were inspected last, were chosen 4x more often than the rest.

Participants rejected positioning and cam up with other reasons why they made the selection they did,

Question 9

Disruptions of Consciousness

Answer 9

Consider Korsakoff’s syndrome and Blind Sight.

Korsakoff: “memory without awareness”. Implicit memories remain intact with anterograde amnesia; thus, they do take in information but cannot consciously access it.

Blind sight: “unconscious perception”. Unmistakably, it is possible to perceive in the absence of consciousness.

Question 10

Anterograde Amnesia

Answer 10

Patients cannot form NEW memories (post-event) yet do have implicit memories; they do take in information, but cannot consciously access it - as seen by completing word-stem tests.

Question 11

Blind Sight

Answer 11

For all practical purposes, patients are “blind”, yet, although these patients are unaware of seeing, in some ways they “can see”. Thus, there is a difference between “perception” and “conscious perception” - it is possible to perceive in the absence of consciousness.

This may be because of “islands” of intact tissue within the damaged brain area or because of several neural pathways carrying info from the eyeballs to the brain.

Question 12

Subliminal Perecption

Answer 12

Perception below the limen or threshold of conscious awareness. People can perceive & be influenced by visual inputs they didn’t consciously see.

From an experiment measuring N400 waves:

• subliminal words were detected and influenced subsequent perception
• People seemed to be able to (at least in some limited way) integrate subsequent perception.

Question 13

N400 waves

Answer 13

A component of time-locked EEG signals known as event-related potentials (ERP).

Larger N400 waves occur when participants encounter a sequence of words that violates their expectations, eg. “very + happy + war”

Question 14

Pre-requisites for Executive Control

Answer 14

1. Initiate actions:
   means of launching desired actions & overriding unwanted actions
2. Represent goals and plans:
   representation to serve as guides to action
3. Know what’s going on:
   what’s happening in the mind? What information is coming in? How can they be integrated with one another? Any conflict between incoming info or between info and current goals?
4. Smoothness:
   Know how smoothly and easily current processes are unfolding.

Question 15

Action Slips

Answer 15

The largely uncontrolled nature of routine makes it easy for you to become a victim of habit, relying on customary patterns even if you hope to avoid them.

Example:
Missing a turn to your friends house because you automatically take the home-route.

Question 16

Mental Reflexes

Answer 16

Unconscious processes (in memory, perception, and reasoning) serve as a sophisticated and highly useful set of mental reflexes. These are, however, inflexible.

They are rooted in biology (likely built into the essential structure of the Nervous System) and/or created through practice.

Question 17

Overcoming Mental Reflexes

Answer 17

When you need to direct your own mental processes - to rise above the habit or avoid responding to prominent cues in the environment - you need executive control.

Avoid action slips/ mental reflexes by consciously telling yourself and making a plan to (insert goal).

Question 18

Metacognition

Answer 18

Our ability to monitor and control our own mental processes

Question 19

Link between Executive Control and Metacognition

Answer 19

There’s a need for self monitoring; a need for self-controlling and self-direction. Guided by a sense of goals - whether generated on the spot or derived from your long standing beliefs.

Question 20

Metamemory

Answer 20

A sub-type of metacognition. Our knowledge about, awareness of, and control over our own memories.

Example: studying for an exam.

• Knowing what info you do and don’t know - you can initiate actions to study and use learning techniques
• Which facts you deem easier or harder to memorize - deciding time allocations
• Where you feel you’re at with info - “I got this under control, next section now” vs “I’m struggling here, I need to devote more time”
• Your beliefs about memory - “deep processing is an effective way to memorize”
• Control - using your beliefs to guide your own behaviour

Question 21

Access Consciousness

Answer 21

Someone’s sensitivity to certain types of info and thus, the persons access to that info

Question 22

Phenomenal Consciousness

Answer 22

Centers on what it actually FEELS like to have certain experiences -

That is, the subjective experience that distinguishes a conscious being from a “zombie” (or robot or computer) that might have access to that same info but with no “inner experience”.

Question 23

Qualia

Qualia: Plural | Quale: singular

Answer 23

Subjective experience. Our conscious awareness of what it feels like to do certain things.

Example: we can give an alien lots of info about chocolate, but we cannot convey the experience of taste - the quale of the chocolate taste.

Question 24

Research offering info about qualia

Answer 24

Research on fluency. “Resonating to a visual input”.

People seem sensitive to the degree of fluency: they know when things have gone easily and when they have not, although they do not detect fluency AS fluency - attributing it to the sense of familiarity or degree of confidence, etc.

Like with qualia, you can experience your own fluency but no one else can.

Question 25

Justifications for action

Answer 25

Qualia (might) promote spontaneous and intentional behaviour.

Ie. we only use particular information or perform certain behaviours when the information feels like it should - that is, when you’re experiencing the “right qualia” that goes along with that information or processing.

For some reason, people don’t use a “guessing strategy” - participants seem unable or unwilling to use their implicit memories to guide elicit responding.

Consider blind sight and amnesia.

Blind-sight: Maybe they don’t have the correct qualia associated with that visual info; it doesn’t “feel” like sight, so they don’t use this info to see.

Amnesia: It doesn’t “feel” like remembering so they’re unwiling to use it.

Question 26

“Right qualia”

Answer 26

Justifications for action.

The idea that you need the “right qualia” to use or act on information.