Psychology 1000 Chapter 6: Chapter 6- States of Consciousness November 13th.docx

Consciousness is defined as our moment to moment awareness of ourselves and our environment. Intimately connected with the process of selective attention. Most common measure is self report in which people describe their inner experiences. Self-reports offer the most direct insight into a person"s subjective experiences but they are not always verifiable. Physiological measures establish the correspondence between bodily states and the mental processes. Behavioural measures also are used including performance on specific tasks. Objective but we still must infer the person"s state of mind. Reject the notion of an unconscious mind driven by instinctive urges and repressed conflicts. They view conscious and unconscious mental life as complementary forms of information processing. Controlled (effortful) processing is the voluntary use of attention and conscious effort. Automatic processing can be performed with little or no conscious effort. Occurs most often when we carry out routine actions or well learned tasks.