Chapter 8
SUMMARY
8.1 Describe the two main functions of consciousness.
•
Consciousness refers to the subjective awareness of percepts, thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It performs two functions: monitoring the self and environment and controlling thought and behaviour. Attention is the process of focusing awareness, providing heightened sensitivity to a limited range of experience requiring more extensive information processing. Divided attention means splitting attention between two or more stimuli or tasks.
•
Consciousness can be measured through self-report questionnaires, brain imaging techniques and behavioural observation. Psychologists also study the flow of consciousness through experience-sampling techniques, such as beeper studies. Even such a private experience as consciousness is in part shaped by cultural practices and beliefs, which influence aspects of subjective awareness, such as the experience of time and the focus on internal psychological states.
•
Flow is a mental state of consciousness in which a person performing an activity is fully absorbed in a feeling of energised focus, complete involvement and intrinsic enjoyment of the activity.
8.2 Distinguish among the different theoretical principles on consciousness.
•
Freud distinguished among conscious, preconscious and unconscious processes. Conscious mental processes are at the centre of subjective awareness. Preconscious mental processes are not presently conscious but could be readily brought to consciousness. Dynamically unconscious processes — or the system of mental processes Freud called the unconscious — are thoughts, feelings and memories that are inaccessible to consciousness. They are inaccessible because they have been kept from awareness because they are threatening. Research over several decades has demonstrated that subliminal presentation of stimuli can influence conscious thought and behaviour. Emotional and motivational processes can also be unconscious or implicit.
•
The cognitive unconscious refers to information-processing mechanisms that occur outside of awareness, notably unconscious procedures or skills and preconscious associational processes such as those that occur in priming experiments. Cognitive theorists have argued that consciousness is a mechanism for flexibly bringing together quasi-independent processing modules that normally operate in relative isolation and for solving problems that automatic processes cannot optimally solve.
•
Hindbrain and midbrain structures, notably the reticular formation, play a key role in regulating states of wakefulness and arousal. Like most psychological functions, consciousness appears to be distributed across a number of neural pathways, involving a circuit running from the reticular formation through the thalamus, from the thalamus to the cortex (particularly the prefrontal cortex) and back down to the thalamus and midbrain regions of the reticular formation.
8.3 Describe the functions of sleep and distinguish among the psychological views of dreaming.
•
The sleep–wake cycle is a circadian rhythm, a cyclical biological process that evolved around the daily cycles of light and dark. Sleep proceeds through a series of stages that cycle throughout the night. Most dreaming occurs during REM sleep, named for the bursts of darting eye movements.
•
Freud distinguished between the manifest content or storyline, and the latent content or underlying meaning of dreams. Freud believed the latent content is always an unconscious wish, although most contemporary psychodynamic psychologists believe that wishes, fears and current concerns can underlie dreams. Cognitive theorists suggest that dreams express thoughts and current concerns in a distinct language with its own rules of transformation. Some biological theorists contend that dreams have no meaning; in this view, dreams are cortical interpretations of random neural impulses generated in the midbrain. Others focus on the role of sleep and dreaming in memory consolidation. These three approaches to dreaming are not necessarily incompatible.
8.4 Explain how people might experience altered states of consciousness.
•
In altered states of consciousness, the usual conscious ways of perceiving, thinking and feeling are changed. Meditation is an altered state in which the person narrows consciousness to a single thought or expands consciousness to focus on stimuli that are usually at the periphery of awareness. Hypnosis, characterised by deep relaxation and suggestibility, appears to be an altered state, but many hypnotic phenomena can be produced under other conditions. In altered states that occur during religious experiences, the person feels a sense of oneness with nature, others or the supernatural and experiences a breakdown in the normal boundaries between self and non-self.
•
Psychoactive substances are drugs that operate on the nervous system to alter patterns of perception, thought, feeling and behaviour. Depressants, the most widely used of which is alcohol, slow down the nervous system. Stimulants (such as nicotine, caffeine, amphetamines and cocaine) increase alertness, energy and autonomic reactivity. Hallucinogens create hallucinations, in which sensations and perceptions occur in the absence of any external stimulation. Cannabis leads to a state of being high — euphoric, giddy, uninhibited or contemplative. Psychoactive substances alter consciousness biologically, by facilitating or inhibiting neural transmission at the synapse, and psychologically, through expectations shaped by cultural beliefs.
KEY TERMS
altered states of consciousness Deviations in subjective experience from a normal waking state.
attention The process of focusing consciousness on a limited range of experience.
beeper studies An experience-sampling technique that has provided a more natural window to the flow of consciousness in everyday life.
circadian rhythm Biological rhythm that evolved around the daily cycles of light and dark.
cognitive perspective A psychological perspective that focuses on the way people perceive, process and retrieve information.
cognitive unconscious Information-processing mechanisms that operate outside of awareness, such as procedural memory and implicit associative processes, as opposed to the psychodynamic unconscious, which includes information the person is motivated to keep from awareness.
conscious mental processes Processes that involve a subjective awareness of stimuli, feelings or ideas.
consciousness The subjective awareness of mental events.
daydreaming Turning attention away from external stimuli to internal thoughts and imagined scenarios.
depressants Drugs that slow down the nervous system.
dichotic listening A procedure in which different information is presented to the left and right ears simultaneously.
divided attention The process by which attention is split between two or more sets of stimuli.
evolutionary perspective The viewpoint built on Darwin’s principle of natural selection that argues that human behavioural proclivities must be understood in the context of their evolutionary and adaptive significance.
experience-sampling A research technique whereby participants report on the contents of consciousness at specified times.
flow A mental state of consciousness in which a person performing an activity is fully absorbed in a feeling of energised focus, complete involvement and intrinsic enjoyment of the activity.
hallucinations Sensory perceptions that distort, or occur without, an external stimulus.
hallucinogens Drugs that produce hallucinations.
hypnosis An altered state of consciousness characterised by deep relaxation and suggestibility, which a person voluntarily enters through the efforts of a hypnotist.
hypnotic susceptibility The capacity to enter deep hypnotic states.
insomnia The inability to sleep.
latent content According to Freud’s dream theory, the meaning that underlies the symbolism in a dream.
manifest content The obvious storyline of a dream.
meditation A relaxation practice, often associated with religion, characterised by a state of tranquillity.
mindfulness A state of focused awareness of all senses — thoughts, feelings and behaviours — without judgement and without reaction.
non-REM (NREM) sleep States of sleep in which rapid eye movements (REM sleep) are not present.
preconscious mental processes Thoughts that are not conscious but could become conscious at any point, much like information stored in long-term semantic memory.
psychoactive substance Any drug that operates on the nervous system to alter patterns of mental activity.
psychodynamic perspective The perspective initiated by Sigmund Freud that focuses on the dynamic interplay of mental forces.
rapid eye movement (REM) sleep The period of sleep during which darting eye movements occur, autonomic activity increases and patterns of brain activity resemble those observed in waking states.
religious experiences Subjective experiences of being in contact with the divine, which can range from relatively ordinary experiences, such as listening passively to a sermon, to altered states of consciousness in which a person feels at one with nature or the supernatural.
selective attention A process of filtering in and filtering out information such that only more important sensory information passes through to consciousness.
selective inattention The process by which important information is ignored.
states of consciousness Different ways of orienting to internal and external events, such as awake states and sleep states.
stimulants Drugs that increase alertness, energy and autonomic reactivity.
subliminal perception Perception of stimuli below the threshold of consciousness.
unconscious mental processes In Freud’s theory, mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness, many of which are repressed.