PSY 202 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Sleep Disorder, Hypersomnia, Narcolepsy
16 May 2012
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Document Summary
Consciousness - the subjective awareness of internal and external events. Last century psychology was referred to as the science which describes and explains the phenomena of consciousness . Research techniques studied introspection, in which subjects reported on their own internal thoughts. Attention the internal processes people use to set and follow priorities for mental functioning. For adaptive reasons, the brain uses attention to focus selectively on certain parts of the environment while largely ignoring others. We are consciously aware of only those things that receive some measure of attention. Any individuals mental resources are limited: given the particular cognitive skills that a person has developed, he or she will be limited in the number and kinds of cognitive tasks that he or she can perform simultaneously. If you tried to focus on and think about everything is the environment, you would suffer interference from irrelevant input.
