Download Consciousness - Coweta County Schools

States of Consciousness
“No problem can be solved from
the same level of consciousness
that created it.”
Albert Einstein
What is consciousness?
• Awareness of one’s own mental activity & environment
– Personal
– Can be selective
– Consciousness is continuous and ever-changing
• Phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness)
simply experience
• Subconscious-part of mind below
level of conscious perception
• Preconscious-memories or feelings
not part of one's immediate awareness
but recalled through conscious effort.
involves complete or near-complete lack of responsiveness
Fainting
Coma
PVS
Sleep
Persistent vegetative state (PVS) condition in which
individual loses higher cerebral powers of brain,
but maintains sleep-wake cycles with full or partial
autonomic functions.
Attentional Processes
• Selective Attention
– ability to focus awareness on single stimulus to
exclusion of other stimuli
– Cocktail party phenomenon
• Divided attention
– ability to distribute one’s attention and
simultaneously engage in two or more
activities
– Multi-tasking
Mental Control & Thought Suppression
• Wegner and colleagues (1987)
– Can we at suppress our thoughts?
• IV: 2 (order:expression/suppression X
suppression/expression)
• DV: # of rings of bell (to indicate thinking of ‘white bear’)
and mentions of ‘white bear’
– Rebound effect
• Stereotypes, dieting
• participants who suppressed anxious or depressing
personal thoughts showed significant rebound effect
compared to those who expressed thoughts from outset
– Generally good control but
sometimes we fail
Analytical psychology, part of
unconscious mind, shared by society,
people, or all humankind, product of
ancestral experience, contains concepts
such as science, religion, and morality.
later changed to objective psyche.
common to everyone; has better sense of self's ideal than ego or conscious self
“Daydream Believer”
• Imaginary scenes & events that occur while
awake
• Possible functions:
– Mental rehearsal
– Mental arousal when bored
– Problem solving (practical & creative)
– Pleasure
Biological Rhythms
• Periodic fluctuations in physiological functioning
• Four cycles:
– Yearly
– 28-day
– Circadian (24 hours)
– 90 minutes
Circadian Rhythm
• Influences sleep &
wakefulness
• Blood pressure
• Hormones
• Body temperature
• Humans drift toward 25-hour
cycle because of advances in
technology
• Syprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)
– Controls our timing device for
circadian rhythm
Meditation
• Procedure that uses mental exercises to
achieve highly focused state of consciousness
– TM transcendental meditation
– Relaxation response
• Effects include:
– Increased self esteem & sense of control
– Overcoming insomnia, preventing smoking
Near-Death Experiences (NDE)
 altered state of
consciousness
reported after
close brush with
death
 often similar to
drug-induced
hallucinations
Measuring (proving) NDEs
As NDE intensity increases according to Rasch scale*
— peace, joy and harmony, followed by insight and
mystical or religious experiences – increase.
Interest in NDE originally spurred by research of
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Swiss-born psychiatrist & author
On Death and Dying) where she first discusssed what is
known as Kübler-Ross model.
*(Rasch Scale – more credible person = more believable)
Near-Death Experiences
 Dualism
 presumption that mind and body are two
distinct entities that interact
 Monism
 presumption that mind and body are
different aspects of the same thing
In the field of Artificial Intelligence, there is a movement
to create digital computer programs that can
simulate consciousness.
Turing Test
Test to determine whether or not computer satisfied
operational definition of "intelligent" (which is actually quite
different from test for consciousness or self-awareness). This
test is commonly cited in discussion of artificial intelligence.