Psych Exam 2: Consciousness

Consciousness

Awareness of ourselves and what is around us

Aspects of consciousness

Alertness, self-awareness, free will, thoughts

Awareness

The degree to which we notice details around us

Arousal

Refers to a person’s level of wakefulness or alertness

The Unconscious

All of the cognitive processes that support ordinary perception, memory, and thinking without conscious awareness or attention

What can the unconscious do?

Monitor, understand and respond to aspects of your experience without your awareness

Freud and the unconscious

a hidden place for repressed desires, often in conflict with the conscious mind

Levels of consciousness

Conscious, preconscious, dynamic unconscious

Conscious (tip of iceberg)

Focus of current awareness

Preconscious

Consciously accessible thoughts, feelings and memories

Dynamic unconscious

Inaccessible memories, instincts and desires

Current theories on the unconscious

Implicit processes, Dual-Process, Somatic markers, Goal pursuit

Implicit processes

mental processes that influences your thoughts, feelings and behavior without conscious awareness or deliberate control

Dual-process

the mind uses 2 different systems for thinking and making decisions

System 1

fast and automatic (habits, intuition, learned associations)

System 2

Slow and deliberate (effortful, requires attention, reason and decision making)

Somatic markers

bodily/emotional reaction that became associated with certain situations and guides your decisions

Goal pursuit

the conscious mind deliberately chooses goals and makes decisions while the implicit processes influence motivation, emotion, habits and reactions

Waking conscious

State in which your thoughts, feelings and sensations are clear and organized. You feel alert

Altered state of consciousness

Shift in the quality/pattern of mental activity (separate from sleep and wakefulness)

Selective Attention

Prioritizing awareness to whatever is relevant to one’s goal (excluding everything else)

Change blindness

Failure to notice significant changes in the visual environment

Mind wandering

attention shifting away from a goal directed task toward internal, self generating thoughts, memories or future plans

Perceptually decoupled way of thinking

awareness not directly tied to the immediate sensory information from the environment

Global Workforce Hypothesis

Conscious awareness arises when diverse regions of the brain coordinate and communicate with one another

Default mode network

Collective of brain parts active when the mind is wandering or not actively working on a task

Depressants

Slow down body’s physiological and mental processes by increasing GABA

Opiate

Depressant

Xanax

Depressant

Klonopin

Depressant

Benzos

Depressants

Barbiturates

Depressant

Valium

Depressant

Stimulants

speeds up body’s physiological and mental processes stimulating dopamine

Cocaine

stimulant

Ecstasy

Stimulant

Meth

Stimulant

Synthetic marijuana

Stimulant

Psychedelics

Alter perceptions, distort time and create hallucinations affecting serotonin

Peyote

Hallucinogen

Psilocybin

Hallucinogen

Salvia

Hallucinogen

Ketamine

Hallucinogen

PCP

Hallucinogen

Purposeful Altered Consciousness

Consciousness can be altered through activities and experiences

Physical Exercise

Enhances consciousness by directly altering brain chemistry and structure, increasing blood flow

Mindfulness

Enhances consciousness by training mental processes to pay attention with purpose