Chapter 14 (Conscious Thought, Unconscious Thought) Study Guide for Exam 3

verbal/dualism/materialism

1) Access consciousness What information do you have conscious access to? - Measured by many recent experiments - We are aware of some mental events, but not others How can we tell what is in awareness and what is not? ____________ report- most straightforward method: - If we can describe a thought, perception, or memory to someone else, then it is clearly in awareness - To measure what is in a subject's awareness, we ask for their introspections We can also be aware of something without reporting it - Some perceptions and feelings are hard to put into words - Sometimes we don't want someone to know what we're thinking - Sometimes we can't speak because of injury or other reasons 2) Phenomenal consciousness What does our subjective experience feel like? The "hard problem"- difficult to study experimentally What is it like to be conscious? - Qualia Could your conscious experience be produced by activity in your brain? - The mind-body problem Possible solutions: 1) ________________- our consciousness (mind) is something beyond our physical brains - The brain is made of physical substance - The mind is nonphysical 2) _____________________- Everything can be explained with one kind of substance and one type of property (all physical) - No fundamental distinction between physical and mental, or between brain and mind - The mind is nothing more than the physical activity in the brain

subliminal perception

a pattern in which people perceive and are in some ways influenced by inputs they did not consciously notice

working memory/representations

Baars' Global Workspace Theory- Sensory info comes into ________________ ________________ which is the foundation of the global workspace - Consciousness highlights part of the contents of working memory and makes it available to many different subsystems - The perceptual info in working memory can be shaped by expectations and knowledge of context - Information in working memory will be matched against memory ______________________, and associated ideas will be added to working memory The information in working memory can trigger actions Conscious working memory is a shared representation accessible by all of these different subsystems

subsystems/communication

Bernard Baars- Proposes Global Workspace Theory Consciousness as Global Workspace: - Assume mind is made up of separate _________________ - Each subsystem can solve a different type of problem - The role of consciousness is to allow ________________ among these different subsystems

indirect(implicit)/implicit/conscious/qualia

Both amnesic and blind-sight patients lead us to ask the question- does information (visual info for blind-sight patients, remembered info for amnesic patients) need to be conscious for it to be put to use? Need for conscious awareness of information for spontaneous use study by Graf, Mandler, and Haden (1982): - College students were shown a list of words and then later tested in one of two ways: 1) Some were directly asked to recall the earlier list of words and were given word stems as cues: "What word on the prior list started with CLE?" 2) Other participants were tested indirectly: "What is the first word that comes to mind beginning with the letters CLE?" Results reveal much better memory in the _____________________ test than in the direct/explicit test Participants in direct test could have asked themselves the same question that the participants in the indirect test received to fill the gaps in their memory and performance between the two groups would have been more similar- clearly participants in the direct test group did not use this tactic Participants being tested explicitly seemed unable or unwilling to use their ___________________ memories to guide explicit responses Access to relevant information is not enough to take it seriously- need some sort of justification or reasoning; in order to report on recollection, need some reason to believe remembered information is credible Degree of trust on recollection may depend on __________________ experience- take action based on information only if the information has the right _______________

qualia

Claims about subjective experiences of consciousness are all speculative ________________ are undetectable by anyone other than the person experiencing them- difficult to study; Some may matter deeply in shaping a person's thoughts and actions while others don't

unconscious/framing

Conscious thinking is still often guided by the cognitive unconscious- acts as a support structure that exists at the "fringe" of conscious thoughts Evidence for unnoticed fringe seen in the role of the problem-solving set and framing - Problem solving sets guide problem solving abilities- helpful to stay focused, protecting from distracting or unproductive trains of thought but also an obstacle because it is ____________________ so it is difficult to pause and reflect on these sets/eliminate problematic beliefs or misleading assumptions - We are often unaware about how __________________ of problems affects our decisions; Unnoticed frameworks can guide deliberate, conscious thinking and reasoning- protects from ambiguity and uncertainty, but also governs content and sequence of thoughts

conscious/initiating/implicit

Consciousness promotes and allows spontaneous and intentional behavior - Blind-sight patients provide evidence that some aspects of vision can proceed with no ______________________ awareness and no conscious supervision; can still perform certain visual tasks with surprising accuracy when asked by a researcher, but have difficulty ____________________ these tasks on there own and insist they are blind - Amnesic patients can still perform on tests of ___________________ (unconscious) memory, but do not spontaneously use these implicit memories in their everyday lives

subjective/consciousness

Consciousness was main concern in psychology when it first emerged as a discipline Wilhelm Wundt sought to understand "elements", William James sought to understand the "stream" of consciousness Early in the field, argued that consciousness research was ___________________ and unscientific so it did not really go anywhere Rough definition of _______________________- a state of awareness of sensations or ideas, such that you can reflect on those sensations and ideas, know what it "feels like" to experience these sensations and ideas, and can, in many cases, report to others that you're aware of the sensations and ideas Still problems with this definition

visuomotor/awareness

Dissociation Between Perceptual Awareness and _________________ Control: Awareness of orientation mediated by "WHAT" pathway - Damaged in DF Orientation of card to be posted controlled by "WHERE" or "HOW" pathway - Not associated with _________________ - Intact in DF

perception

Frank Jackson described the situation of "Mary the Color Scientist" - Her entire visual experience is black, white, and shades of grey - She has never experienced any other color. - Mary lives in a time when every last question about the visual system has been answered. She knows everything science can tell about color vision: - Which neurons respond to which colors. - How they are connected to other neurons to produce the color sensations we experience. Will she learn something about color experience that she did not already know? Does she learn something new by experiencing red that she did not already know from her studies about the neuroscience of color _____________________? If she really knew everything there is to know from scientific studies of color vision, what else is there for her to learn?

products/processes/inference/unconscious

Generally, we are aware of mental ________________ but unaware of the mental ___________________ that help develop these products Can lead to errors- E.g., trying to remember something, we have a conscious awareness of the product (whatever it is we are trying to remember) but are not usually aware of the processes (the recollection necessary to find this memory), and it is in these processes that bits of information from other events may accidentally get woven in- no way of telling which bits of information are supplied by memory retrieval and which bits rest on ______________________ or assumption Memory errors are often undetectable because the processes that helps us find memories are ____________________, so it is difficult to distinguish genuine recall from (potentially flawed) assumptions

introspect/illusion/consistent/irrelevant

In making conclusions, we are often unable to _____________ about the processes leading to them Unconscious processes, conscious products In many instances, the feeling of conscious processes may be an ________________ such that these processes are still largely unconscious Experimental examples: the Nisbett and Schachter (1966) shock study- participants offered (conscious) explanations as to why they had accepted so much shock, but were unaware of the real reason (the placebo effects of the pill leading to a misattribution of physical symptoms) Study where participants read a brief excerpt from a novel and were asked to describe the emotional impact it had on them and why it had this impact; Participants judgments were very _______________ -> 86% referenced the same passage about the messiness of a baby's crib that set the emotional tone These judgments were wrong because another group of participants read the same excerpt without the passage about the crib, and had the same overall emotional reactions In these studies, participants insist that they understand the causes of their actions and the underlying processes that influenced them, but they are incorrect in their introspections and often highlight ____________________ factors

confident/convergence

Integrating capacities of neuronal workspace are important in confirming information for _______________ recollection --> convergence of cues plays key role in persuading that perception or memory is real __________________ of inputs provided by the neuronal workspace helps provide the plausibility of conscious experience that we use in deciding whether our ideas, perceptions, and memories are false creations or true to reality

what/agnosia

Patient DF: - Damage to _______________ pathway impairs object recognition (visual ____________) - Drawing ability and object memory OK Two visuomotor tasks: 1) Perceptual orientation matching- Orient card to match orientation of slot 2) "posting" Put card into oriented slot, like mailing a letter DF cannot do orientation matching task, but can do "posting" task

less/somatic markers/unconsciously/inference

Interpretation and Inference Experiment by Nisbett and Schachter (1966)- Participants subjected to a series of shocks with each shock slightly more severe than the one before- wanted to see how far the participants would go 1) Placebo group- told placebo pill would reduce effects of shocks but also cause side effects like irregular breathing, stomach butterflies, trembling hands Participants who took placebo pill before experiment that they were told would reduce shock effects were willing to accept four times as much shock severity than those who did not receive the pill Attributed physical symptoms of fear ("side effects") to pill and were ______________ influenced by their own physical symptoms in judging when to stop the shocks 2) Control group- Had not been given pill, and attributed physical symptoms of fear as ____________ _______________- used these in judging when to stop the shocks Participants in placebo group were _________________ reasoning about the pill- when asked after the experiment about why they accepted so much shock, they never mentioned the pill; Detected their physical symptoms and made an unconscious _________________ about the source of the symptoms, attributing them to the pill rather than the shock

reconstructions/beliefs/unconscious/introspection

Introspection is often so off because of unconscious thought- people need some other way to inspect these processes and then use after-the-fact ________________________ as their main source of information in order to do so People reason based on their ________________ about the situation in general and so they believe their inferences are correct because they are based on generic knowledge These after-the-fact reconstructions do not feel like inferences to people- it feels like they are simply "remembering" their mental processes that took place; feels like genuine introspections _________________ after-the-fact reconstruction is misinterpreted as conscious ___________________

unconsciously

James Vicary- researcher in late 1950s that inserted the words "Eat Popcorn" into a single frame in a movie Brief exposure did not appear long enough for viewers to perceive it consciously, but many were still ____________________ influenced by it with popcorn sales increasing by more than 50% This experiment turned out to be a hoax, but similar studies have found similar results

learning/executive control

John Flavell notices that children need to develop metacognitive skills Metacognitive Skills- skills in monitoring and controlling mental processes; matters for many domains of life, especially memory Metamemory- people's knowledge about, awareness of, and control over their own memory Metacognition skills are important for studying habits- We have control over what we decide to focus on more when studying (what we assume will be more difficult material) - Using metamemory judgments to forecast our own _____________________ and assess our learning so far Obvious link between metacognition and broader claims about ________________ _________________; Both require a need for self-monitoring; a need for self-control and self-direction; Both guided by a sense of goals Executive control is more inclusive- focused on all aspects of self-monitoring and self-control

familiar/action slips

Largely uncontrolled nature of routine/habits makes it easy to fall victim to these habits, relying on ___________________ patterns even when you hope to avoid them ______________ _____________- cases in which you do something different than what you intend; Typically involves doing what is normal or routine in a situation, rather than doing what you planned to do on that occasion E.g., driving to the store and intending to take a left turn to get there, but turning right instead because it is the way you usually drive to school Routine is forceful, automatic, and uncontrolled

Korsakoff's/implicit

Patients with ____________________ syndrome provide further evidence of the unconscious; Seem to have no conscious memory of events they've witnessed or things they've done Still test rather normally on tests of _______________ memory- when probed indirectly, they provide evidence of their current behaviors being shaped by some specific prior experiences Jacoby and Witherspoon (1982)--> termed this as "memory without awareness"

integration/attention/synchrony/communication/activity/PFC

Many investigators endorse one proposal about consciousness in the brain Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis- A specific claim about how the brain makes conscious experience possible; the proposal is that "workspace neurons" link together the activity of various specialized brain areas, and this linkage makes possible the __________________ and comparison of different types of information binding problem- the task of linking together the different aspects of experience in order to create a coherent whole; ________________ plays a key role in solving this problem; in the absence of attention, different neural responses to single stimulus will be independent of one another With attention to different aspects of single stimulus, neurons in different systems fire in _____________, and the brain registers various sets of coordinated activity as a linkage among the different processing areas and these attributed are bound together to holistically perceive a stimulus They key is that workplace neurons provide a means of ____________________ from one brain region to another so that synchrony is made possible; This process of carrying information is selective, so not every bit of neural activity gets linked to every other bit; various mechanisms create competition among different brain processes- those that are privileged- with the most __________________- are communicated to other brain areas How is information designated as privileged? What information is most likely to be communicated? Attention- attention given to stimuli involves activity in __________ that can sustain and amplify activity in other neural systems - By increasing activity in one area or another, information that is attended to is privileged - Information flow between brain regions is limited and controlled by what we attend to

subjective/materialists

Nagel claims that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat, without actually being a bat - According to him, this is simply the nature of ______________ experience Can a materialistic theory explain what it is like to be? Does it need to? - Some ______________________ will argue there is nothing to explain- if we can explain why people behave the way that they do, that is all that needs to be explained

neural account/attention

Neuroscience studies suggest that consciousness is associated with neural activity that is coordinated across different brain regions Dehaene tries to explain neuroscience results within Global Workspace Theory - Dahaene's ______________ _______________ of consciousness Some stimuli are too weak to trigger consciousness - If a stimulus is strong enough, it still has to compete for attention ;Even a strong stimulus will not make it into awareness if ________________ is diverted to another stimulus - Subliminal = weak stimulus; May be attended, even though it is outside of consciousness - Preconscious = strong enough, but not yet attended - Conscious = attention amplifies signal, become conscious According to this theory, a stimulus enters conscious awareness when brain activity from perceptual systems is coordinated with frontal activity

occipital/blind sight/awareness

Patient D.B.- developed tumor in ________________ cortex and underwent surgery that damaged brain tissue Became partially blind- unilateral neglect syndrome- could not see anything in left half of visual field Testing revealed pattern- when ask to see target in area he "could not see" or reach for object in same region, he was generally correct although he supposedly had no awareness of this region in space Patient G.Y. showed similar pattern- damage to occipital cortex resulted in blindness but performance was quite accurate when he was asked to move his arm in a way that matched the movement of a target Weiskrantz and Warrington used the term "___________ _____________" to describe patients like D.B. and G.Y.- patients with blind sight are truly blind by any conventional definition, but are still able to generally "guess" the color of targets they insist they cannot see; they "guess" the shape of a form (X or O, or square or circle); they can also "guess" the orientation of lines Forces us to distinguish between "seeing" and "having visual ___________________________"

conscious

Pattern of blind sight may be due to the areas of brain tissue that still remain intact in these patients - In other patients, it may be because of the neural pathways that carry information from the eyeballs to the brain; disruption in one of these pathways does not disrupt the others, such as a neural pathway passing through the superior colliculus - Must distinguish between perception and __________________ perception --> people are still able to perceive in the absence of consciousness (e.g., patients with blind sight)

conscious

Paying attention to important tasks (being mindful) can help rise above habit and adjust/improve performance Mindfulness supports ___________________ thought- without mindfulness, it can be easy to let the inflexible, unconscious processes that operate on situational cues or prior patterns/habits to take control

familiarity/confidence/availability/qualia

Processing fluency is sometimes more efficient than at other times- people are sensitive to this degree of fluency but do not perceive it as fluency - People tend to misinterpret degree of processing fluency as specialness- leads them to perceive fluency as _____________________________ Fluency effects can be demonstrated in many ways: - ______________________ expressed in memory influenced by fluency of retrieval; - Repeated retrieval increases this confidence- by retrieving a memory over and over, it is more practiced and therefore comes to mind easier, although it still may not be accurate - __________________ heuristic: Thoughts/examples that come more readily to mind have increased processing fluency; people perceived this fluency as a measure of frequency and assume that readily available examples reflect that something occurs often - Fluency can be described as a type of _______________: It is a subjective experience relevant to our conscious mental life, but everyone's levels of fluency vary based on different mental processes

dualists/materialists

Quale- a subjective experience (pl. qualia) - ______________ will say that qualia are something that goes beyond the physical brain - __________________ will say those feelings are nothing more than the consequences of the activity in the brain

sensitivity/reticular activating system/contents/level

Researchers can use a variety of neuroimaging techniques to track patterns of brain activity, as well as tracking changes that occur in brain activity when someone first becomes aware of a stimulus that's been in front of their eyes all along This research reveals many different brain regions crucial for consciousness- not one specific group of neurons is responsible; Helpful to distinguish between two broad categories of brain sites that correspond to two aspects of consciousness 1) Brain sites responsible for level of alertness or ______________________: Difference ranges from being sleepy/dimly aware (of a stimulus, memory, etc) to being fully awake, highly alert and completely focused - This aspect of consciousness is compromised from damage to certain sites in the thalamus or reticular activating system in the brain stem - __________________ ____________ ______________- controls overall level of arousal of the forebrain and also helps control sleep/wakefulness cycle 2) Brain sites responsible for _________________ of consciousness: Various contents for consciousness rely on different brain areas (very broad set of brain areas because each area concerned with different content) - Visual cortical structures especially active when consciously aware of sights in front of your eyes - Forebrain cortical structures are essential when thinking about a stimulus that's no longer present in immediate environment Distinction between ________________ of awareness and content of consciousness is useful in distinguishing these brain sites; Also useful in thinking about variations in consciousness E.g., dreaming has well defined content (high activity in content areas) but sensitivity to environment/alertness is low (low activity in alertness areas)

priming/reasoning/judgment/unconscious

Role of the cognitive unconscious is also evident in cases of reasoning E.g., false fame study: Participants convinced themselves that several made-up names were actually the names of famous people - Awareness that these names "stood out" in some way (because of __________________) was misinterpreted as fame - ___________________ processes that occurred to reach this conclusion were largely unconscious, so participants were not aware that the steps they took to get to this conclusion were flawed Making adjustments in ___________________ based on feedback is also an unconscious process: - Explains why in the eyewitness study, participants were unaware that the feedback they received change their level of confidence - Participants that received confirming feedback recalled that they had gotten a better view of the crime although all participants had the same view - Also explains why participants were likely to incorporate misinformation into their accounts- because this after-the-fact reconstruction was _________________

expectations/unconscious/perception/integrating

Subliminal perception experiment by van Gaal et al. (2014) Showed participants trios of words- first two words presented very rapidly, and both followed by a mask that guaranteed the words were not consciously perceived; Third word was presented at a longer exposure with no mask following it, so participants could consciously perceive it Key measure: N400 brain wave- observed when participants encounter a sequence of words that violates their _______________________ In this study of subliminal perception, larger N400 waves were observed when the conscious presentation of words (e.g., "war) were preceded by a subliminal presentation of a positive word, at odds with the conscious word (e.g., "happy" --> "happy" and "war" do not typically go together) The __________________ prime "happy" made the conscious presentation of a word like "war" unexpected - The N400 waves were smaller if "not" was added to the word "happy"; "not happy" and "war" are more expected to be presented together than "happy" and "war" If the second word in the trio was a negative word like "Sad" the results reversed --> the subliminal prime "very sad" led to a smaller N400 brain wave in response to "war"; The subliminal prime "not sad" led to a larger N400 in response to negative words like "War" Shows that subliminal words were detected and influencing subsequent _________________ Created context that in some conditions made "war" more unexpected (larger N400 brain waves), and in others less unexpected (smaller N400 brain waves) Participants also had combined the first two subsequent words to form phrases like "not happy" or "very happy" that had opposite effects on brain waves; Not only were they able to subliminally perceive the primes, but they also had some unconscious capacities for __________________ them

access/phenomenal/qualia

Suggestions about parallels between neuronal workspace and consciousness leave out the distinction between "access consciousness" and "phenomenal consciousness" - _____________ consciousness- someone's sensitivity to certain types of information, and thus the person's access to that information - __________________ consciousness- centers on what it actually feels like to have certain experiences; the subjective inner experience of consciousness _________________- the subjective conscious experiences, or "raw feels," of awareness, for example, the pain of a headache and the exact flavor of chocolate; vary from person to person because everyone's subjective experiences, even of the same phenomena, are different

unconscious/Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)/neuronal workspace

The Neuronal Workspace and Executive Control Connection between neuronal workspace and executive control: Workspace allows for integration of neural systems- this integration allows for reflection on various inputs/ideas and for production of thoughts to rise above habit/routine 1) Workspace provides plausible neural basis for executive functioning; enables escape from limitations that characterize ___________________ processing 2) Workspace supports sensitivity to achieve conscious goals: - Links various processing modules- allows for comparison between processes in brain to detect if there is conflict so processing can be shifted in direction to help achieve goals - Capacity to detect conflict may be supported by brain mechanisms specialized for this function _____________ _____________ __________________- a structure linked to the frontal cortex and also connected to structures such as the amygdala, nucleus accumbens, and hypothalamus that play pivotal roles in emotion, motivation, and feelings of reward that plays a crucial role in detecting and resolving conflict among different neural systems 3) Workspace proposal supports shift between wakefulness and sleep - During sleep, communication breaks down among different parts of the cortex, so that the brain's various activities aren't coordinated with one another - This communication is typically mediated by the ________________ __________________, and is crucial for consciousness; loss of this communication is characteristic of sleep- when people are not conscious of their state or circumstances

biological/unified

The integrated activity that is made possible by workplace neurons, provides the _________________ basis for consciousness Workplace neurons are responsible for linking bits of information from different areas of the brain together to create a ________________ experience of consciousness

subjective

These thought experiments (i.e., Frank Jackson) try to demonstrate the existence of __________________ experience that does not fit into materialist theories. • What it is like to be... • What one comes to know when having a new sensory experience.

blindsight

Two examples of patients demonstrating complex cognitive processing without awareness: - _________________ patients - Patient DF

cues/responses/familiarity/inferences/automatic

Unconscious judgments and inferences tend to be fast, efficient, and reasonable; They tend to be well-tuned to situations and appropriately guided by various situational ________________ Makes unconscious processing more reasonable, but also puts limitations on it 1) One proposal: unconscious processing can be sophisticated but it's strongly guided either by the situation or by prior habit - Unconscious ________________ can be explained in the same way (e.g., reaching for an object you cannot consciously see or a mental response like noting the meaning of a word that was not consciously perceived)- likely to use _________________ as a guide; respond in ways that we've responded in previous, similar situations If this proposal is correct, unconscious processing will largely be out of your control and governed instead by habit or setting Evidence: we have awareness of how using ___________________ to fill in gaps in memory can lead to errors, yet we still make these errors because we cannot "turn off" these unconscious processes; Process of making inferences is __________________ and effortless

executive control/integrated/conscious

Unconscious processes proceed without ________________ _________________ Executive control necessary to rise above habit or avoid responding to prominent cues in surrounding What does executive control involve? Needs 4 things: 1) means of launching desired actions/overriding unwanted actions; Needs an "output" 2) Way of representing goals/subgoals to serve as guides to action; a way of representing an "agenda" to reach some end goal 3) Awareness of what is going on in the mind; Way of keeping track of information input/understanding how this input can be ____________________ in a cohesive way/awareness of conflicting information with current goals 4) Knowledge of how smoothly current mental processes are unfolding- If difficulties are identified in current processes, must make adjustments/seek alternatives These prerequisites turn out to be relevant for ___________________ control

mental reflexes/inflexible/attention/practice

Unconscious processes serve as a highly sophisticated and useful set of "______________ ______________"- these reflexes are guided by the situation, and are generally appropriate responses for the given situation; Also _________________ because they are guided by the situation This lack of control of unconscious processes can be useful because it allows many of these processes to run at the same time because no attention is being devoted to them; __________________ can then be sourced to other matters that require more effortful processing Sequence of events for unconscious processing is partially dependent on biological structure; Other unconscious processes operate based on __________________- initiation of familiar sequence of steps takes no conscious thought/effort after it has been practiced enough

mechanistic

Up to now, we have considered cognition using the information processing approach Underlying this approach is a ___________________ assumption about the mind What do we mean by this? - Operates according to specific rules or laws - Can be measured and studied scientifically - Connected to the physical world - Governed by laws of physics, chemistry, etc. Can consciousness be explained mechanistically?

holistic/selective/amplifies/working memory

We are only aware of our ____________________, conscious experiences- not the bits of information that are linked together by workspace neurons in order to make this experience possible; One representation is generated from the coordinated activity of many processing components Conscious experience is also _____________: We only have awareness of a certain amount of objects/features in our environment - Of these objects and features, we typically choose what to focus on- These observations are highly accommodated by the workspace model- workspace neurons governed by competition (limited capacity) and shaped by how we choose to focus our attention- properties of the workspace directly map onto properties of our experience Attention _________________ and sustains neural activity- With attention supporting the neuronal workspace, we are able to maintain active representations for extended periods of time- workspace makes it possible to continue thinking about a stimulus or an idea after it has been removed - Can link workspace proposal to claims about working memory and its associated brain areas- specifically the PFC; Demonstrates connection between ______________ _______________ and conscious processing

within/outside

What types of mental events are generally within awareness, and what types are not? __________ awareness: - Perceptions - Drives - Emotional responses - Plans - Inner speech _____________ awareness: - Early perceptual processing - Late motor control - Many aspects of language - Repressed memories - Some motivations

creativity/mindfulness

When our mind wanders, we are often aware of the content of our thoughts, but we are unaware for a period of time about how we got to them through unguided processes Mind wandering can help escape boredom and enhance ________________ Great deal of mind wandering involves mental time travel- focus on past or future events Actively engaging with tasks seems to help avoid mind wandering; Training in ___________________ is also beneficial

access/phenomenal

Why is consciousness so difficult to describe? The word "consciousness" can be used to refer to different things: 1) _________________ consciousness - The mental experiences of which we are aware and have the ability to report on without the capacity to report on how the content was built up by all the neurons, neurotransmitters, and so forth, in the nervous system. 2) _______________________ consciousness- A form of consciousness with a subjective experiential quality, as involved in perception, sensation, and emotion. 'What it is like' to experience such mental phenomena.

blind sight/visual

_______________ _______________- a pattern resulting from brain damage, in which the person seems unable to see in part of their field of vision but can often correctly respond to visual inputs when required to do so by an experimenter Often observed in patients with damage to ________________ cortex Patients with blind sight are blind in every conventional sense - Do not react to flashes of bright light - Still are able to respond to questions about visual environment with reasonable accuracy For example, can answer questions about shape/movement of visual targets, orientation of lines, and emotional expressions on faces; also tend to reach toward objects in right direction and with specific hand position appropriate for shape/size of target object when instructed to do so

cognitive unconscious

behind-the-scenes mental activity; the broad set of mental activities that you're not aware of but that make possible your ordinary interactions with the world A lot of mental work can take place without conscious supervision- but sometimes, this lack of conscious supervision can lead to problems

neural correlates of consciousness

events in the nervous system that occur at the same time as, and may be the biological basis of, a specific mental event or state

what/visuomotor/awareness/where

matching and grasping tasks For a good grasp, the line should pass through the center of the shape DF cannot accurately show width of block with fingers, but can position fingers to pick it up - Patient DF shows good grasp, despite ________________ pathway damage; but she cannot discriminate the shapes from one another - DF's _________________ system knows things about objects' shape and orientation that she cannot report --> It functions without her ____________________ - There is also evidence for dissociation between awareness and visuomotor control in those without brain damage Patient RV has ______________ pathway damage, and grasp is often far from center

mind-body problem

the difficulty in understanding how the mind (a nonphysical entity) and the body (a physical entity) can influence each other, so that physical events can cause mental events, and mental events can cause physical ones

dualism

the presumption that mind and body are two distinct entities that interact

Materialism (physicalism)

the view that the mind and mental phenomena are physical and can be explained scientifically in physical terms; all processes are composed of, or are reducible to, matter, material forces, or physical processes (e.g., emotions are a result of physical processes)