01:830:101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Change Blindness, Inattentional Blindness, Introspection Illusion
6 Jun 2018
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Module 8 Outline: Brain States and Consciousness
The Place of Consciousness in Psychology’s History
▪ 1880s: Psychology defined as description and explanation of states of consciousness
▪ First half of 20th century: Direct observation of behavior
▪ 1960s: Consciousness nearly lost; science of behavior
▪ After 1960s: Study of consciousness altered by hypnosis, drugs, and meditation; importance of
cognition
▪ Today: Under the influence of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive neuroscience, our
consciousness has reclaimed its place as an important area of research.
Brain States and Consciousness
▪ Consciousness: Awareness of self and environment
▪ Inattentional blindness: Failure to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
The Biology of Consciousness
▪ Cognitive neuroscientists
▪ Explore and map conscious cortex function and can sometimes “read” minds
▪ Suggest consciousness arises from synchronized brain activity
Dual Processing: The Two-Track Mind
▪ Dual processing
▪ Principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious (explicit)
“highroad”-reflective and unconscious (implicit) intuitive “low road”-intuitive
▪ Perceptions, memory, attitudes, and other cognitions all operate on two levels
▪ The human brain is a device for converting conscious into unconscious knowledge
Blindsight awareness
▪ Condition in which a person can respond to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing
▪ Patient D.F—brain damage caused her to not be able to see ‘consciously” but be able mail a
letter
▪ We have some blindsight—if our right and left eyes view different scenes, we will only be
conscious of one at a time, yet we display some blindsight awareness of the other
▪ Eye sends information simultaneously to different brain regions that support different tasks
▪ D.F.’s brain had damage in area responsible for recognizing objects
When the blind can “see”
• A visual perception track enables us “to think about the world”—to recognize things and to plan
future actions. A visual action track guides our moment-to-moment movements.
Cognitive neuroscience is the Interdisciplinary
study of the brain activity linked with cognition
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