PS101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Neurogenesis, Sleep Deprivation, Cardiovascular Disease
Document Summary
Consciousness is the awareness of internal and external stimuli. Psychologists are interested in understanding human behaviour and our behaviour is the result of conscious thoughts. Some of what enters our consciousness seems intentional and designed to further specific goals or motivations. Mind wandering refers to people"s experience of task-unrelated thoughts, thoughts that are not related to what they are intentionally trying to do at a given moment. Mind wandering might be less likely to occur if the task you are engaged in is one that required significant cognitive resources, that mind wandering is associated with less accurate awareness of external information. The distinction between what we control about our mental processes and what just seems to happen is often referred to as the difference between controlled and automatic processes. Automatic processing happen without our intentional control or effort. The term blink refers to how quickly and effortlessly some of our judgements and choices seem to be made.
