PSYC 100 Chapter 4: PSYC 100 Chapter 4.docx

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Daniel J Levitin

Document Summary

Between the vegetative state and full consciousness is the minimally conscious state: deliberate movements (can follow objects with eyes, attempt communication, etc. In a similar experiment, two pictures were flashed (a chicken claw to the right eye/left hemisphere, and a snow covered house to the left eye/right hemisphere) and the participants were asked to point to related pictures (the right hand/left hemisphere would point to a chicken, and the left hand/right hemisphere would point to a shovel). When asked to explain why they picked the related pictures, the reasoning was that the chicken claw belonged to a chicken and the shovel was related because you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed. (remember, the left hemisphere controls speech and did not know what the right hemisphere saw). The left brain tends to compress its experiences into a comprehensible story and to reconstruct remembered details based on the gist of that story.