PSY100Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, Stroop Effect, Prefrontal Cortex

• School: UTM
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY100Y5
• Professor: Dax Urbszat

Document Summary

Cortex and consciousness: cognitive bias"s, reward and punishment determine what we pay attention to in our environment, unconsciously. Dependent on our learning history: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Last part of brain to develop (about 25) Our conscious awareness is limited in capacity and we are aware of only a small amount of the stimuli around us at any one time. Attention refers to the process by which we focus or awareness. I will think about this issue but not that one Pay attention so we don"t miss out on reward or danger or threat. Notion that brief exposure to sub-threshold stimuli can influence awareness. Study: subjects are shown aggressive (a) or positive (b) stimuli. Subjects shown panel a first subsequently rate the boy in panel c more negatively: unconscious cognitive processes. Information-processing view can be extended to analyses of unconscious processes. Notion is that many brain mechanisms operate in parallel. Some of these mechanisms operate outside of the level of consciousness.