Chapter 15: Conscious Thought, Unconscious Thought

Identify each statement as an example of either metacognitive monitoring or metacognitive control.

"I had the worst dream last night. I'm trying not to think about it." = control "I wanted to make sure that I remembered him later, so I paid a lot of attention to his face." = control "I am going to ace this exam tomorrow. I know the material inside and out." = monitoring. "I'm going to test myself on the material instead of rereading it." = control. "I tried to study like you suggested, but I don't think it helped." = monitoring. "I think that's the man I saw stealing the bike, but I'm not sure." = monitoring.

Which of these claims most accurately describes the current state of knowledge about consciousness?

"We can demonstrate that many processes occur outside of awareness; people often have no direct information about why they behaved as they did."

Place these simplified steps in order to explain how consciousness may promote—perhaps allow—spontaneous and intentional behavior in patients with blind sight.

1). Visual stimulus is presented. 2) Visual information is integrated in the neuronal workspace. 3). Patient determines reality based on qualia. 4). Patient does not take action.

Around which of these patients would it be most important to avoid making comments that you would never say if you thought they would hear you?

A patient with locked in syndrome.

___refers to one's sensitivity to certain types of information.

Access consciousness.

Molly is on her way home from work to pick up her daughter from her new babysitter's house. She needs to turn left at the four-way intersection after exiting the highway to get there. Based on this goal, which of these are action slips?

Action Slip: She gets back onto the highway as though going back to work. She turns right instead of left as though going to the old babysitter's house. She drives past the intersection.

In order to perform its function, what does the executive need?

An "output" side. An "input" side. Away of representing goals and agendas. A way of monitoring the state of current processes.

People's knowledge about, awareness of, and control over their own memory is referred to as their ___.

Metamemory.

Holly has been diagnosed with blind sight. Her physician holds up a flashlight in front of her. What will she likely do or be able to do?

Can do: Say whether the physician is holding it vertically or horizontally. Identify its color. Reach for it. Point to its general location.

In one experiment, participants were asked to undergo a series of electric shocks, with each shock slightly more severe than the one before. Before the shocks began, participants took a (nonactive) pill. Control participants were told that the pill might make them a bit itchy and their feet might feel numb. Placebo participants were told that the pill would diminish pain but might also make their hands tremble, their stomachs feel jittery, and heart rate might increase. Nicki was one of the participants in this study. At the end of the task, she told the experimenters that she was "too worried about the shock to think of anything else" and that she didn't think about the pill at all. Was Nicki likely in the control condition or the placebo condition?

Cannot be determined from this information.

According to your textbook, how is consciousness analogous to a radio? Match the corresponding elements.

Clarity of the radio signal = degree of awareness. The radio station = content of consciousness.

How does the neuronal workspace hypothesis explain basic facts about conscious experience? Match the statements about the workspace that directly explains each fact.

Conscious experience can be maintained = Attention amplifies and sustains neural activity in the workspace. Conscious experience is selective = Information carried by workspace neurons is limited by competition and how you focus attention. Conscious experience feels unitary and coherent = The workspace coordinates and integrates activity from many processing components.

Identify the consequences of the neuronal workspace to conscious processing and executive control.

Consequences: Detects conflict between your goals and responses. Introduces novelty in mental processing.

People interpret retrieval fluency as a reflection of memory accuracy: If a memory comes to mind easily, it is often judged to be ____and people are ___ in their retrieval.

Correct confident

According to the neuronal workspace hypothesis, what do "workspace neurons" do?

Correct: Create a unified experience. Carry information back and forth among brain regions.

Which of these questions pertain to the mind-body problem?

Correct: How can a physical event cause a mental event? How can a mental event cause a physical event?

Modern research on consciousness has been concerned with which of these questions?

Correct: How does the brain make consciousness possible? What is consciousness? How does consciousness function?

To what extent are participants generally aware of their mental processes?

Correct: Often, participants' introspections are incorrect.

Participants in one study viewed a videotaped crime and then attempted to pick the perpetrator's picture out of a lineup. Later, participants received either confirming feedback for their choice, disconfirming feedback, or no feedback. Participants were then asked further questions about the video, like "How good a view did you get?" and "How well did you see his face?"

Correct: Participants reasoned, "The police say I got the right answer, so I guess I can set aside my doubts." Participants reasoned, "I chose the right person, so I guess I must have gotten a good view after all." Feedback altered what participants later remembered about the experience of making the identification.

Which of these students is making study decisions based on their qualia?

Correct: Paul is skimming his textbook the night before his midterm for things to study. He skips over the large tables and graphs because those feel very familiar. Cheyenne can easily recite the poem that she is trying to memorize when she turns it face down on her desk, so she feels very confident and stops practicing. Annie thinks that it felt easier to recall her notes on acetylcholine receptors than dopamine, so she switches to studying more about dopamine.

In this study, participants held a card. In one condition, they were asked to hold the card at an angle that matched the orientation of the slot in front of them. In another condition, they were asked to imagine that they were "mailing" the card, placing it into the "mail slot." What was true of Patient D.F.'s performance on this task?

Correct: She could perform the mailing task perfectly. She could perceive the slot unconsciously.

Based on the description, what is the correct diagnosis for each patient?

Daniel does not react to lights, sounds, or painful stimuli. He does not open his eyes spontaneously and has no detectable sleep-wake cycle = coma. Ashutosh can track the pen that his doctor moves in front of his eyes and squeeze his hand when instructed, but he is otherwise unresponsive = minimally conscious state. Kory appears to have awoken from her coma and has opened her eyes, but she is only exhibiting reflex behaviors = unresponsive wakefulness syndrome. Raquelle maintains a normal sleep-wake cycle. She otherwise appears unconscious, but her neural responses to stimuli are the same as those of healthy controls = locked in syndrome.

Ryan is trying to solve the two-string problem: Identify each of these thoughts as conscious or unconscious elements of his problem solving.

His assumption that the pliers are to be used only for bending wires = unconscious. His knowledge that the strings are too far apart to grab simultaneously = conscious. His problem-solving set = unconciuous. His out-loud review of what he has tried so far = conscious.

What was true of the "Eat Popcorn" experiment in the late 1950s?

It was a hoax.

Which of these points are evidence in favor of the proposal that consciousness allows spontaneous, intentional behavior?

Korsakoff's patients have impaired explicit memory but intact implicit memory = not evidence. Korsakoff's patients only use implicit memories when prompted, insisting that they don't know the information = evidence. Qualia influence judgments of memory accuracy, frequency, confidence, and so on = not evidence. Blind-sight patients are not consciously aware of the visual information that they have, so they don't use it or act upon it = evidence. Blind-sight patients insist that they are blind but are sensitive to some visual information = not evidence.

One way to diagnose seemingly unconscious patients is to measure their brain activity via fMRI. When listening to spoken sentences or when prompted to imagine different activities, a patient with ___can exhibit brain activity that is essentially indistinguishable from healthy controls. This can help to distinguish the condition from ___.

Locked in syndrome Unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.

You're generally aware of your___ but unaware of your ___.

Mental products. Mental processes.

In general, people's ability to monitor and control their own mental processes is referred to as ___.

Metacognition.

Which of these statements are examples of metacognitive judgments?

Metacognitive: "I don't think I know this well enough to stop studying it yet." "Honestly, I don't think I was paying much attention in class today. You should probably ask someone else for notes. Sorry!" "Those vocab terms will be easy to remember. I can study those last."

In which of these scenarios is the researcher NOT attempting to understand a neural correlate of consciousness?

Participants in Dr. Perry's experiment were told to press a key whenever they observed a stimulus in their peripheral vision.

Chapter 7 of your textbook discusses a study in which participants convinced themselves that several fictitious names were actually the names of famous people. To make sense of the data, researchers believe that thoughts roughly like these were going through the participants' minds: "That name rings a bell, but I'm not sure why. The experimenter is asking me about famous names, and there are other famous names on this list in front of me, so I guess that this one must also be the name of some famous person." Identify the statements about the study and data that are true and which ones are false.

Participants were aware that some of the names were distinctive = true. These thoughts occurred consciously = true. Participants report that they had thoughts like these at the end of the study = false. Telling participants not to reason in this way prevents the thought = false.

____ refers to what it feels like to have certain experiences.

Phenomenal consciousness.

People interpret ___ as an indicator of familiarity: The greater the fluency, the more recently the stimulus must have been encountered.

Processing fluency.

Which of these are examples of qualia?

Qualia: The pain of a headache. The experience of processing fluency. The taste of soy sauce.

People also interpret ___ as a reflection of event frequency: The greater the fluency, the more likely or frequently the event has occurred.

Retrieval fluency.

Psychologists refer to the broad set of mental activities that make ordinary interactions with the world possible (all of which happen outside of awareness) as

The cognitive unconsciousness.

Identify the true and false statements about after-the-fact reconstructions.

The reconstruction usually feels like an inference = false. They are often correct = true. When based on incorrect or incomplete information, reconstructions will be incorrect = true. They are a source of direct access to the unconscious process = false.

Which of these statements is true of qualia?

They are detectable only by the person who experiences them.

Dierdre claims that she can mentally picture things but her friend, Leslie, says he doesn't have any mental imagery. What may be true of Dierdre and Leslie? If none of these can be true, select the "None of the above" button.

They may both be correct about their self-reports. They may actually be experiencing the same thing but differing in their reports. They may have different biological mechanisms underlying their visual imagery abilities. They may differ in their unconscious experiences

Which of these statements about the neural correlates of consciousness are true?

True: Many brain areas are crucial for consciousness. The thalamus is important for controlling one's alertness.

What is the difference between the sleeping brain and the "awake brain"?

When asleep, communication breaks down within the cortex so that activity is no longer coordinated.