PSY1EFP Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Terri Schiavo Case, The Cocktail Party, Donald Broadbent
18 Jun 2018
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EFP Lecture 5 Session 1 – Brain Behaviour Relationships (5)
Consciousness is a subjective experience
Consciousness: one’s subjective experience of the world, resulting from brain activity
-The brain and the mind are inseparable.
-Each of us experiences consciousness personally.
-We cannot know if two people experience the world in exactly the same way.
Do you see what I see??
One difficult question related to consciousness is whether people’s subjective experiences of the world are similar.
For instance, does red look the same to everyone who has normal colour vision?
For the Blue and Black Dress 2015, They found the ambiguity of the lighting on that late winter afternoon was crucial,
leaving it poised between looking as if it was in shadow, in daylight or in artificial light. So, too, though, was a more
unexpected factor; whether you are a night owl or a lark. “The brain faces uncertainty, in general, it does not say, “ I
do not know.”, it says “I’ll fill-in the uncertainty with assumptions”. The bottom line is, “people made different
assumptions” he said.
Conscious awareness involves attention
At any one time, each person can be conscious of a limited number of things.
- Automatic versus controlled processing
-The book, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
-The cocktail party phenomenon
-Shadowing
Selective attention
Donald Broadbent developed filter theory to explain the selective nature of attention.
-In this model, attention is like a gate that opens for important information and closes for irrelevant information.
-Some stimuli demand attention and virtually shut off the ability to attend to anything else.
-Decisions about what to attend to are made early in the perceptual process.
Laptops in the classroom
The rise of laptop computers and smartphones in the classroom over the last decade has increased the difficulty for
instructors of holding students’ attention.
-Overwhelming evidence shows that students who use Facebook, text, or surf the Internet during class do more
poorly in University courses.
Change blindness studies by Simons and Levin
Unconscious processing influences behaviour
Thought and behaviour can be influenced by stimuli that are not experienced at a conscious level.
-Subliminal perception: the processing of information by sensory systems without conscious awareness
-Advertisers have long been accused of using subliminal cues to persuade people to purchase products, but with
little success.
Brain activity gives rise to consciousness
Scientists cannot (yet) read your mind by looking at your brain activity, but they can identify objects you are seeing.
-Psychologists can examine and measure consciousness (e.g., fMRI).
-Consciousness arises from brain circuits’ activity.
-Can we use this as a “lie” detector??
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
The global workplace model
The global workspace model posits that consciousness arises as a function of which brain circuits are active.
-In some cases, people with a brain injury are unaware of their deficits (hemineglect).
Most importantly, the global workspace model presents no single area of the brain as responsible for general
“awareness.”
Visuospatial neglect
Extreme states
Conditions of impaired consciousness provide useful points of contrast to “normal” (fully-functioning) consciousness
Persistent vegetative state
- Full coma that lasts more than a month
- Terri Schiavo
Minimally conscious state
-Deliberate movement and communication are possible
-Jan Grzebski
-Loss of consciousness and post traumatic amnesia
Persistent vegetative state versus minimally conscious state
Terry Schiavo spent more than 15 years in a persistent vegetative state before she was taken off life support. Her
parents and their supporters believed she showed some awareness. As the dark areas of the brain scan on the left
indicate, however, there was no activity in Schiavo’s brain because her cortex had deteriorated beyond recovery.
States of consciousness
Permanent Minimally Conscious State?
Locked in syndrome
State of conscious quadriplegia with voluntary movement limited to vertical eye movement and possible eye blinking
Death predominately caused by respiratory complications
No patients regained ability to speak in full sentences at 5 year follow-up (one was able to utter single words
consistently and four could inconsistently)
Erik Ramsey is “locked in… He suffered traumatic injury to his brain as the result of an automobile accident
He can see, hear and feel, but he cannot move or communicate with the outside world…at least not yet
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Efp lecture 5 session 1 brain behaviour relationships (5) Consciousness: one"s subjective experience of the world, resulting from brain activity. We cannot know if two people experience the world in exactly the same way. One difficult question related to consciousness is whether people"s subjective experiences of the world are similar. For the blue and black dress 2015, they found the ambiguity of the lighting on that late winter afternoon was crucial, leaving it poised between looking as if it was in shadow, in daylight or in artificial light. So, too, though, was a more unexpected factor; whether you are a night owl or a lark. The brain faces uncertainty, in general, it does not say, i do not know. , it says i"ll fill-in the uncertainty with assumptions . The bottom line is, people made different assumptions he said. At any one time, each person can be conscious of a limited number of things.
