1	Consciousness Chapter 4
2	What Is “Consciousness”? Defined by medical doctors as the awareness that is demonstrated by either explicit or implicit recall. Defined by psychologists as one’s awareness of the outside world and of one’s mental processes, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
3	The Scope of Consciousness
4	Levels of Consciousness Conscious Level: Awareness of events and one’s mental processes. e.g., Nonconscious Level: Mental processing that is totally removed from conscious awareness. Can learn to alter nonconscious processes through biofeedback training. Preconscious Level: Mental events that are outside awareness, but can easily be brought into awareness.
5	What Is Meant By The “Unconscious”? Term used by Sigmund Freud to describe mental activities that can alter thoughts, feelings, and actions but that are difficult to bring into awareness. Unacceptable sexual and aggressive urges are actively kept out of consciousness. Contemporary psychologists do not accept this view. Use “unconscious” or “subconscious” to describe mental activity that influences us in various ways but occurs outside of awareness.
6	Can We Mentally Process Information Without Awareness? Research studies Surgery patients’ word preferences Research participants unknowingly learning and using complex rules. Blindsight Priming Mere exposure effect.
7	Stimuli Used in a Priming Experiment
8	Thinking Critically: Can Subliminal Messages Change Your Behavior? What am I being asked to believe or accept? Our behavior can be secretly influenced without our awareness. Is there evidence available to support the claim? Conscious judgments can be affected by subliminal messages. Subliminal messages can result in physiological arousal. But no evidence supporting the effectiveness of subliminal self-help tapes.
9	Thinking Critically: Can Subliminal Messages Change Your Behavior? (cont’d) Can that evidence be interpreted another way? Many claims for subliminal persuasion are hoaxes. Testimonials as to effectiveness may be biased. What evidence would help to evaluate the alternatives? Assess effectiveness through controlled experiments.
10	Thinking Critically: Can Subliminal Messages Change Your Behavior? (cont’d) What conclusions are most reasonable? Subliminal perception occurs, but has no potential for “mind control.” Subliminal effects are usually small and short-lived, and affect only general measures of overall arousal. Subliminal messages have no special powers.
11	Focus on Research: Subliminal Messages in Rock Music What was the researchers’ question? Could a backward message be perceived and understood when the music was playing forward? Would such a message have any effect on one’s behavior? How did the researchers answer the question? Tape recordings of the 23rd Psalm and the poem “Jabberwocky” were played backwards to groups of college students. Did the students hear anything meaningful?
12	Focus on Research: Subliminal Messages in Rock Music (cont’d) What did the researchers find? The participants could not make sense of the backward messages at a conscious level. There was no evidence that the meaning of the backward messages were processed subconsciously. The backward messages did not alter the participants’ behavior.
13	Focus on Research: Subliminal Messages in Rock Music (cont’d) What do the results mean? Backward messages are not consciously or unconsciously understood. Backward messages do not influence behavior. What do we still need to know? Why does the incorrect idea that backward messages can influence behavior persist?
14	Altered States of Consciousness Represents changes in mental processes extensive enough to produce noticeable changes in psychological and behavioral functioning. Consciousness is considered the most common, or “baseline,” state. But considerable cultural variation in what is considered “normal consciousness.”
15	Sleeping and Dreaming Does your brain go to sleep when you do?
16	EEG During Sleep
17	A Night’s Sleep
18	Sleep Disorders Insomnia: One feels daytime fatigue due to trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Most common sleep disorder. Learning-based treatments may be most helpful. Narcolepsy: Person abruptly enters, without warning, REM sleep directly from the waking state. Combination of regular naps and stimulant drugs can be a helpful treatment.
19	Sleep Disorders (cont’d) Sleep Apnea: Person briefly but repeatedly stops breathing during the night. Has many causes. Effective treatments include weight loss and use of an air mask. Sometimes surgery is warranted. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): Sleeping infant stops breathing and dies. Recommended that infants sleep face-up.
20	Sleep Disorders (cont’d) Sleepwalking: Occurs in non-REM sleep, usually in childhood. Waking a sleepwalker is not harmful. Drugs can help, but most outgrow problem. Nightmares: Frightening REM dreams. Night Terrors: Horrific dream images during stage 4 sleep. Especially common in boys. Sometimes treatable with drugs.
21	Sleep Disorders (cont’d) REM Behavior Disorder: Person does not experience the near-paralysis that normally accompanies REM sleep. Move as if acting out one’s dream. Can be dangerous to the dreamer or those nearby. Sometimes occur with daytime narcolepsy. Drug treatments usually effective.
22	Sleep as a Circadian Rhythm Circadian Rhythm: Cycle of behavior and physiology that repeat about every 24 hours. Disruptions of sleep-wake cycle can create problems. Jet Lag: Pattern of fatigue, irritability, inattention, and sleeping problems. Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN): Our internal “biological clock.”
23	Sleep, Dreaming, and the Brain
24	Functions of Sleep Extended sleeplessness leads to fatigue, irritability, and inattention. Some believe non-REM sleep helps restore body and brain for the next day’s activities. Functions of REM sleep? May improve functioning of neurons that use norepinephrine. May be a time for developing, checking, and expanding the brain’s nerve connections. May help to solidify and absorb the day’s experiences and skills.
25	Dreams and Dreaming Some of brain activity during sleep is experienced as dreams Occurs mostly during REM sleep. May last a few seconds or for many minutes. Despite senselessness, dreams often contain some logic. Daytime activities seem to have only minor influence on dream content. Lucid dreaming involves intentionally directing dream content.
26	Why Do We Dream? May be a fundamental process for analyzing and consolidating information. Freud argued that dreams are a disguised form of wish fulfillment. Ways of satisfying unconscious urges or resolving unconscious conflicts. Activation-Synthesis Theory views dreams as meaningless, random by-products of REM sleep. The brain’s attempt to make sense of meaningless stimulation during sleep. But content may still have psychological significance.
27	Freud and Dreaming As typically defined, dreams are associated with REM sleep, although N REM sleep is not a mental void. Freud suggested that dreams serve to fulfill sexual and aggressive wishes and that we forget dreams due to repression. Analysis of the manifest content of a dream yields the dream's latent content, or supposed true meaning.
28	Hypnosis Can you be hypnotized against your will?
29	Hypnosis An altered state of consciousness brought on by special techniques. Leads to a willingness to respond to suggestions for changes in one’s experience and behavior. Hypnotic susceptibility is the degree to which a person responds to hypnotic suggestions. Willingness to be hypnotized is most important factor in susceptibility.
30	Main Changes in People During Hypnosis Tendency not to begin actions on one’s own. Redistributed attention. Enhanced ability to fantasize. Susceptibility to readily take on different roles. Reduced reality-testing.
31	Explaining Hypnosis State Theory: Hypnosis creates an altered state of consciousness. Role Theory: Hypnotized people are acting in accordance with a social role that demands compliance. Dissociation Theory: Hypnosis is a socially agreed-upon opportunity to display one’s ability to let mental functions become dissociated.
32	Reports of Pain in Hypnosis
33	Meditation, Health, and Stress Meditation provides a set of techniques intended to create an altered state of consciousness characterized by inner peace and tranquility. Meditation claims: It increases one’s awareness and understanding of self and one’s environment. It reduces anxiety, improves health, and aids performance.
34	Meditation, Health, and Stress (cont’d) Common method is to focus attention on just one thing until one stops thinking about anything else. Person experiences nothing but “pure awareness.” Attention is organized in a variety of ways.
35	Meditation, Health, and Stress (cont’d) Meditators often report significant reductions in stress-related problems. Meditator’s scores on personality tests show increases in overall mental health, self-esteem, and social openness. How effects are produced is unclear. Similar effects achieved through biofeedback, hypnosis, and relaxation.
36	Psychoactive Drugs How do drugs affect the brain?
37	What Is A Drug? A drug is a chemical not required for normal functioning, yet has an effect on the body. Psychoactive drugs affect the brain, changing consciousness and other physiological processes. Psychopharmacology is the study of psychoactive drugs.
38	Psychopharmacology Most psychoactive drugs affect the brain by altering the interactions between neurotransmitters and their receptors. To create effects, the drug must cross the blood-brain barrier.
39	Agonists and Antagonists
40	The Varying Effects of Drugs Substance Abuse: Pattern of drug use that causes serious social, legal, or interpersonal problems for the user. Psychological Dependence: Person continues drug use despite its adverse effects. Addiction: A physiological state where one not only strongly craves the drug, but the drug is also necessary to prevent withdrawal syndrome.
41	Varying Effects of Drugs (cont’d) Tolerance: Person needs increasingly larger drug doses to produce the same effect. Effect of Learned Expectations: Expectations about drug effects develop in part as one watches other people react to the drug. Helps to explain the variability seen in drug effects across cultures.
42	Depressants Reduces or depresses CNS activity. Partly by increasing activity of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. Creates feelings of relaxation, drowsiness, and sometimes depression.
43	Alcohol Most common depressant drug. Physiological effects involve the neurotransmitters GABA, endorphins, and dopamine. Affects specific brain regions. Some effects depend on both biochemical factors and learned expectations. Gender differences in metabolizing alcohol. Genetics appear to play a role in determining the biochemical effects of alcohol.
44	Barbiturates Highly addictive. Effects of small doses include relaxation, mild pleasure, loss of muscle coordination, and lowered attention. High doses can cause deep sleep. But continued use actually distorts sleep patterns. Severe withdrawal symptoms.
45	Gamma Hydroxybutyrate (GHB) Naturally occurring substance similar to GABA. Laboratory-manufactured version of GHB has become a popular “club drug.” Known for creating relaxation, euphoria, loss of inhibition, and increased sex drive. But, can also create numerous physical problems and even death, especially when combined with alcohol or other drugs.
46	Stimulants Speeds up CNS activity. Examples: Amphetamines: Affects sleep, learning, and mood. Cocaine: Its powerful and rapid effect on dopamine level may explain its highly addictive nature. Caffeine: Reduces drowsiness and can enhance cognitive performance; increases capacity for physical work
47	Stimulants (cont.) Examples: Nicotine: Effects include elevation of mood and improvement in memory and attention. MDMA (“Ecstasy”): Creates euphoria, increases sex drive, visual hallucinations, but permanently damages the brain.
48	Opiates Can induce sleep and relieve pain. Highly addictive class of drugs. Examples: Opium Morphine Heroin Codeine
49	Hallucinogens Also called psychedelics. Creates a loss of contact with reality and alters other aspects of emotion, perception, and thought. Examples: LSD Marijuana