What is consciousness?
Awareness of self and surroundings
Operates on a continuum: focused alertness- day dreaming- coma
Name 4 causes of altered consciousness?
Sleep and dreams
Psychoactive drugs
Meditation
Hypnosis
What is the Hard problem? (Chalmers, 1994)
How the physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience
What in unconscious processing?
Subliminal perception - stimuli below individual's threshold for conscious perception Thought suppression (e.g try not to think of a polar bear and you can't stop)
What is the ironic process theory? Proposed by Wegner in 1994
An intentional operating process searches for mental contents to create the desired mental state
An ironic monitoring process searches for mental contents that signal the failure of mental control
What effects do psychedelics have?
- hallucinations (visual - patterns and colours)
- delusions (merging with surroundings)
- -emotional changes (ranging from euphoria to terror)
What are the two forms of meditation?
- Concentrative/ one-point meditation - diminish sensory input, attentional effort
- Open meditation - aware of everything around, mindfulness, requires practise, ritualistic
What is the definition of hypnosis?
A social interaction in which one person (the subject) responds to suggestions offered by another
(the hypnotist) involving alterations in perception, memory, and voluntary action.
What are the 2 views on hypnosis?
- Altered consciousness - Hilgard’s description of induced deafness
- Period of focused attention - state of social compliance and suggestibility
Describe the hypnotised state
- receptive to suggestions
- narrowing attention to single source
- lack of initiative and willful action
- trancelike state
- but, outwardly, can appear fully alert and acting normally
What is a positive hallucination?
Seeing or hearing something not present
What is a negative hallucination
Failing to perceive something e.g pain
