Class notes

Unit 5 - Consciousness

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Course
Psyc 101

Institution
University Of British Columbia (UBC )

Gain insights into the nature and phenomena of consciousness, including subjective experience, self-awareness, and the mind-body relationship. Explore key concepts such as states of consciousness, altered states, and the role of attention. Delve into different theoretical perspectives and scientifi...

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Uploaded on May 11, 2023
Number of pages 6
Written in 2020/2021
Type Class notes
Professor(s) Eva zysk
Contains Consciousness

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Unit 5 – Consciousness
Psyc 101 – Eva Zysk

Consciousness
- Consciousness: our subjective experience of the world and mind
- Phenomenology: how things seem/appear/feel to a person
- Problem of other minds: hard to perceive consciousness of others
- Mind-body problem: how exactly is the mind related to the brain and body?
- Libet (1985)
 Arm moving – reporting time when decided.
 Found that brain electrical activity preceded persons conscious decision to move hand
 First to suggest that it may be the brain which influences our mind (decisions) and body
(movement), not the other way round
- Four properties:
1. Intentionality  direction of our focus
2. Unity  integration of parts into a coherent whole
3. Transience  the shifts in consciousness & perception; “stream of consciousness”
4. Selectivity  what we perceive and what we don’t.
 Cherry (1953)  Cocktail party effect.

Levels of Consciousness
- Minimal consciousness: low level sensory awareness and responsiveness e.g. sleep
- Full consciousness: full awareness of an experience and ability to report on mental state.
- Self-consciousness: awareness is on the self as object of attention
 E.g. mirrors make people more self-critical: people are more helpful, more pro-social, and less
aggressive when see mirror image
 Chronic self-consciousness is linked with depression

Selectivity & Auditory Attention
- Cherry (1953)  Shadowing (Dichotic Listening)
- Very little memory for the meaning of the unattended message
 Listeners failed to notice if the unattended message was in a foreign language, or in reversed
speech (Cherry, 1953)
 Subjects failed to notice when words in the unattended message were repeated 35 times each
(Moray, 1959)
- Physical aspects of unattended message (e.g. gender of talker) could almost always be identified)

Theories of Selective Attention
- How do we selectively attend to one source of information?
- Theories of selective attention:
 Broadbent (1953)  filter theory
1. Both inputs instantly go into a sensory register for a short period (sensory register)
2. One message is identified on the basis of its physical properties (selective filter) whereas the
unattended message has no further processing
3. Attended message then goes through to short-term memory and further processing where
the message undergoes semantic meaning

,  Treisman (1964)  Attenuation model
 Deutsch & Deutsch (1963)  late selection
 Lavie (1995)  perceptual load
- All assume that we have limited cognitive resources and cannot process everything at once.

Can we control our thoughts?
- i.e. does thought suppression work?
- Rebound effect of thought suppression
 After suppressing, the frequency of the avoided thought is increased
- Ironic process of mental control
 Ironic errors occur because the mental process that monitors errors can itself produce errors
Videos:
- Magpie Video: Magpies have bigger brains than other birds which might be why they're able to recognize
themselves in mirrors. They tested this by sticking a colour dot on birds' chests that could only be seen in
a reflection. The birds tried to remove the dot proving that they can recognize themselves when viewing
their own reflection.
- Shopping Cart Study: They examined children's reactions to using a shopping cart after watching a brief
demonstration. After trying the first few times, the child couldn't move it. They discovered that to be able
to push it the person needs a sense of self because they must understand that their body must move the
cart.
- Elephant Video: Eight species on earth can demonstrate self-recognition. After watching elephant social
behaviour, they found that elephants can understand and recognize their own reflection. They would use
the mirror to examine their faces and parts of their bodies that they had not before.
- Dolphin Video: One-way mirrors were used to test dolphins. They found that dolphins were able to
recognize themselves by moving and using self-directed behaviour, e.g. twisting to see belly, moving fins.
- Animals + Mirrors Video: A video released showed gorilla's freaking out when seeing themselves in a
reflection. When they understood, they use it to see parts of their bodies normally invisible to them, e.g.
backs.

Freudian Theories
- Dynamic unconscious: an active system made up of a lifetime of known/unknown: memories, instincts, &
desires, and our inner struggle to control these forces.
- Repression: a mental process that removes unacceptable thoughts from consciousness to keep in the
unconscious
 E.g. what you want to tell someone whom you don’t like, but it is socially unacceptable
- Freudian slip: a verbal mistake that is thought to reveal a repressed belief, thought, or emotion

Cognitive Unconscious
- Stemmed from Freud but is more modern
- Cognitive unconscious: includes all the mental processes that result in a person’s thoughts, choices,
emotions, behaviour even though they are not actually experience by the person.
- Dual process theories: two different systems in our brains for information processing:
1. Fast, automatic, unconscious processing (1) QUICK decision
2. Slow, effortful, conscious processing (2) WELL THOUGHT OUT decision
- Subliminal perception: when thought/behaviour is influenced by stimuli that a person cannot consciously
report perceiving

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