KHA 114 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: The Cocktail Party, Light Therapy, Sleepwalking
29 Jun 2018
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Department
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Psychology D week 11: Consciousness
Philosophical and psychological perspective
- an area where there is a lot of questions and theories
- not many answer, hard to measure, know what exactly it is
what is consciousness:
- subjective experience of the world, our body and mental perspective
- what gives us an understanding of the self and what we are, in position with
the world and the things going on around us
- a constantly moving stream of thoughts. Feelings and perspectives
- a second act of consciousness is self understand. If I am having an idea, I am
the one that is having the idea
ogenerating these perspectives and making sense of incoming sensations
othis offers a richer perspective of consciousness
- “I think therefore I am”- Descartes
owe need to try and understand the world around us, and how our
perceptions are distorted
owhat can we be certain of? If I am thinking then I exist, something
capable of having a thought
oself awareness is what is important
- Consciousness is the foundation of our understand of the world, and our place
in it
- not a unique human quality as previous thought
o‘human like’ levels in animals causes difficulties as other organisms
don’t have language
oa lot of what we study is to do with introspection
othere are still a number of behavioural indicators of animals displaying
key levels of consciousness
looking in the mirror and recognizing
apes, dolphins elephants all have this ability
animals can store and comprehend information
memory
elaborate on it to gain understanding of their place in
the environment
awareness of own existence and mortality
I live now but I wont live forever
Dying is apart of the cycle
Elephants particularly
oDeath ritual: when a member of the herd dies,
elephants grieve
oElephants goes thousands of km out of their
usual environment to the site where a member of
their herd had died
oThe things that make us aware of ourselves as an entity
- What does consciousness do: both function to run a broader set of functions,
meeting the demand for problems we meet in everyday life
oMonitoring:
Monitor self and environment
Perception, thoughts, emotions, goals, problem solving
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Eye-witness testimonies: whether they will reveal information,
or not if it doesn’t apply
Source monitoring: remember an idea by cant remember where
you heard it
Trying to access the information we retrieve from
memory
oControlling:
Regulate thought and behaviour
Initiate or terminate behaviour to attain goals
oMeta-cognition: the way we think about the way we think
Studying: awareness of what study methods are effective, and
how well you have retained information
Applicable in monitoring and controlling consciousness
- Attention: the process of directing conscious awareness, guided by external
stimuli
oHeightened sensitivity to key experiences that are deemed salient
Allows more extensive processing information processing that
has an adaptive function
Theories of consciousness:
- Psychodynamic: Freudian
oThe Id: primitive, instinctive component of personality
Wants and desires
oSuperego: moral censor, ideal self
oThe ego: the mediator, balances the demands of the id, superego and
reality
What can I achieve in this situation
If I want that thing, how can I plan to achieve it in a moral way
oWhen we think about consciousness there are three mental systems at
work:
Conscious mental process: the ego
Subjective awareness of thought and feelings, what is
appropriate and what isn’t
Preconscious: readily accessed if required, not always aware of
Unconscious mental processes: Id
Inaccessible to conscious
Normally cause anxiety because they are naughty
oBecause these unconscious thoughts would be too anxiety inducing,
they are repressed
oRepression acts as a censor
oTakes cognitive effort
oDavid Holmes:
Not validity with experimental research
No evidence for repression
oHowever has cropped up again in the late 80’s regarding repressed
memories
String of cases where people in therapeutic conditions
recovered child abuse memories
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Relates closely to the idea of false memories
One of the mechanisms put forward was repression
oAgain moved away from this idea
- Behavioural: concerned with observable phenomena, not with unobservable
cognitive
oNot introspective: don’t always have access to internal states and how
this is affecting their awareness of the world around them
oEmphasizes that consciousness constantly monitors potentially
significant perceptions, thought, emotions, goals and problem solving
strategies
oIt also controls thought and behaviours to enhance attaining goals
oThis tells us what it is, but not about the mechanisms and how it works
They do not know because they are not concerned with
unobservable mechanisms in the mind
- Cognition:
oDiscriminates between conscious and unconsciousness processes
oConscious processes: allow focus on perception, skills and memories
on relevant problems
Attention
Working memory
What we are aware of
oCognitive unconscious: outside our awareness
Operate outside awareness, they are not something that they are
motivated to keep out of attention (not repressed)
oSensation and perception: we don’t need to direct attention to all of the
sensations, but it is still being processed at some level
The cocktail party effect
Behavioral indices of cognitive processes
Behaviouralism can help us understand the cognitive processes
of consciousness
- Evolutionary: argue that our capacities have evolved through a process of
natural selection, evolved because they have a survival advantage
oWhat we are conscious of relates to where we direct our attention to
oSuperimposed to cognitive processes like conditioning
oConsciousness extra bit to conditioning is that it allows us to adapt to
previous actions
oAllows us to adapt to environment and cope better to these
circumstances
oNeurobiology of consciousness:
Reticular Activating System
Closely related to arousal
To be conscious there needs to be a level of arousal
RAS: Controls arousal, projects to the thalamus and frontal
regions
Pons, medulla, midbrain, posterior hypothalamus
Stems off to planning regions
Seems to be the mechanism through which it is going to
operate:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Philosophical and psychological perspective an area where there is a lot of questions and theories not many answer, hard to measure, know what exactly it is what is consciousness: subjective experience of the world, our body and mental perspective. What gives us an understanding of the self and what we are, in position with the world and the things going on around us a constantly moving stream of thoughts. Feelings and perspectives a second act of consciousness is self understand. If i am having an idea, i am the one that is having the idea: generating these perspectives and making sense of incoming sensations, this offers a richer perspective of consciousness. If i am thinking then i exist, something capable of having a thought: self awareness is what is important. Memory elaborate on it to gain understanding of their place in the environment awareness of own existence and mortality. I live now but i wont live forever.
