Cog- Consciousness

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  • Created by: Amy
  • Created on: 28-12-21 13:37
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  • Consciousness
    • Key aspect of thinking
      • Subjective, inner life of mind
    • Coleman (2015)- 'normal mental condition of waking state of humans characterised by experience of perceptions, thoughts etc and awareness of external world'
    • Awareness of our surroundings and our interactions with them, awareness of our mental state, awareness of our awareness
    • The hard problem (Chalmers 1995)
      • What is is it like to be conscious and experience 'qualia' (subjective experiences
      • How do we know what others experience- is my experience of 'red' the same as yours
    • Access and sentience
      • Pinker (1999)- access consciousness: the results of info processing, Sentience consciousness: our of the results
      • Jackson thought experiment (1982)
        • Mary is colour blind and is a leading expert on colour vision
          • Access consciousness: she understands all the brain processes involved
          • Sentience consciousness: she does not know what it is like to experience a colour like red, there are facts about conscious experience that cannot be deduced from physical facts about the way the brain works
    • Where in the brain is consciousness
      • Global workspace theory Baars (1988,1997; Baars & Franklin 2007)
        • Central processor or 'theatre of consciousness (ACC or PFC?)
          • This stage of consciousness receives, processes, integrates an responds to info from numerous brain areas
        • Consciousness also draws together localised functioning into a unitary awareness
      • Dennett (1991, 2001)- no specific brain region for consciousness no courtesian theatre
        • Not a state of the brain/ place in the brain- the product of sensory info
        • A constant updating of incoming sensory representations or 'drafts', consciousness is the draft or sum of this is processing at any one time
    • The unconscious
      • Freud (1856- 1939)- emphasised the role of the unconscious, driven by instinctive urges and repressed conflicts, Freudian slips
      • The cognitive viewpoint- emphasises consciousness as key to thinking and sensation of unitary awareness, many activities involve controlled (conscious) processes or automatic (unconscious)processing
        • What can be accomplished without conscious awareness or control: perception, most motor movements, retrieval of knowledge from memory, implementation of highly learned skills
      • Selective attention
        • Controls and directs our awareness of events in the environment
        • Determines which events we become coscious of- can be consciously directed (top-down), can be automatically controlled by environment (bottom up)
        • eg Dichotic listening- we can consciously isolate and percieve a single stream of info
      • Intimately connected to consciousness- James (1879): choose some possibilities, suppress others by the agency of attention
      • Personal significance of stimuli influences depth of processing
        • Around 33% of ps noticed their name in non- attended stream (Moray 1959)
        • Bulimic ps more likely to hear the word 'fat' when presented in unattended stream (Schotte et al 1990)
      • Cognitive control ability important
        • Those with reduced attentional control are less able to ignore their names in non shadowed stream (Conway et al 2001)
    • Models of attention
      • An attentional filter (Broadbent)- all or nothing - undetermined by dichotic listening studies
      • Treisman (1960)- attentuation model
    • The cognitve unconscious
      • Evidence from healthy individuals
        • Jiang et al (2006)- ps can be unconsciously directed towards spatial locations based on gender and sexual orientation
          • heterosexual males faster to respond when image was of a naked female even when they are not consciously aware of it, same with other sexual orientations, less so with bisexuals
            • Unconscious image influences behaviour
      • Clinical examples
        • Owens et al (2006)- patient apparently without conscious awareness in a vegetative state
          • When asked to imagine playing tennis or walking around the house, patient showed same distinct brain activation patterns as controls
        • Blindsight
          • Perceptually blind in area of visual filed show response to visual stimuli moving light (without 'qualia'), responses higher than chance guessing, suggests processing before consciousness joins, caused by damage to area responble for processing vision (Weiskrantz et al 1990)
            • Possibly aware of eyes tracking movement
        • Visual agnosia
          • Can detect but not recognise objects eg DF (Milner & Goodale 1995)
            • Unable to visually recognise objects (eg shapes/faces) or judge size etc but can walk across a room avoiding obstacles
        • Split brain patients- respond differently to objects in each visual field
          • Sperry- dual consciousness, Gazzaniga (1985)- LH dominant for consciousness
            • Anarchic hand syndrome- Della Sala et al (1994) patient GP, no voluntary control over alien hand, result in internal conflict
              • Different areas of brain control movement motivated by environment vs internal control
    • How might we view conscious experience
      • Control freak exec- conscious self initiates & is aware of all action- not supported by evidence
      • Couch potato
        • Consciousness is an illusion (Gray 2002), conscious self aware of some action but doesn't initiate anything
          • Raises question of what conscious self is for
      • Delegator (Donald 2001)
        • Conscious self delegates responsibility to unconscious  'expert processes'
          • Consciousness has evolved to deal with novelty & allow flexible behaviour

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