Week 7

Question 1

What is consciousness?

Answer 1

Quality state of awareness, hard to define.

Question 2

Outline the three components of the psychodynamic view of consciousness.

Answer 2

The unconscious - contains all the mental activity, thoughts, memories, impulses, etc. of which you are not aware of at any given moment.
The preconscious - border between the other two; ideas, feelings, memories, thoughts fantasies slip in and out of our awareness. Bring them into consciousness by focusing on them.
The conscious mind - personality, thinking, feeling, of which we are aware of at any given moment.

Question 3

What is implicit memory and what evidence is there to support it?

Answer 3

Type of memory in which previous experience aid the performance of a task without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.

Priming - subjects are measured by how they have improved their performance on tasks for which they have been subconsciously prepared.

Question 4

Outline the features of the cognitive view of dreaming.

Answer 4

Dreams are constructed from the daily issues of the dreamer.

Question 5

Outline the features of the biological view of dreaming.

Answer 5

Dreams represent the attempt of the cortex to interpret the random neural firing of the brain during sleep or the consolidation of newly learnt material.

Question 6

What occurs at 200 ms after stimulus delivery/onset?

Answer 6

Perception becomes conscious.

Question 7

What is agency?

Answer 7

Capacity of someone to act in a given situation; the expression of your ‘free will’.

Question 8

Why do we sleep?

Answer 8

Brain maintenance; flush out metabolic waste in the brain from day’s operations, memory consolidation, memories learned while awake replayed while asleep to strengthen them

Question 9

What are the 5 different stages of the sleep cycle?

Answer 9

Pre-sleep, light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep

Question 10

How long does it take to complete a round of sleep cycle?

Answer 10

90 minutes total.

Question 11

What happens during the pre-sleep stage?

Answer 11

Awake/calm wakefulness.

Question 12

What happens during the light sleeps stage?

Answer 12

50% of brain activity - “no, i wasn’t sleep” phase. Then slows down more.

Question 13

What happens during the deep sleep stages?

Answer 13

Super slow activity - “sleeping like a baby”.

Question 14

What happens during the REM sleep stage?

Answer 14

Highly active brainwaves, vivid and emotional dreaming, rapid eye movements (REM).

Question 15

In which sleep stage is the body paralyzed?

Answer 15

REM sleep stage.

Question 16

Erin spends much of her time daydreaming about what she might do, where she might go, and thinking about her feelings and moods. Psychologists have found that her experiences are what?

Answer 16

A common and normal feature of consciousness.

Question 17

You host a party and intent to make an alcoholic punch but, halfway through the evening, you realise that you forgot to add the alcohol. Your guests assume that the punch is alcoholic .It is likely that what will happen?

Answer 17

Some of your guests will still behave as if they had had some alcohol.

Question 18

Jordan is in the first stage of sleep. What are some characteristics of her consciousness at this time?

Answer 18

A ringing telephone could easily awaken her; her breathing is regular; her heart rate and blood pressure are slowing.

Question 19

According to the biological view of dreaming, dreams what?

Answer 19

Reflect the brains attempt to interpret random neural signals.

Question 20

Olivia is highly susceptible to hypnosis. Given that, would you expect that her ability to become immersed in films and book to be heightened of dampened?

Answer 20

Heightened.