Consciousness
What is consciousness
Consciousness: one’s moment-to-moment subjective experience of the world.
You know you are conscious – that you have consciousness – because you are experiencing the
outside world through your senses and because you know that you are thinking.
Your subjective experiences of sensation are sometimes called qualia, meaning the qualitative
experiences of your conscious state.
Consciousness involves not just your sensations and thoughts but also your memories and anything
else you are experiencing in the moment.
4.1 Consciousness is limited
Most of the time, conscious experience is unified and coherent. In other words, in your subjective
experience, the world makes sense and one thought or perception flows from another.
Consciousness is often described as a continuous stream, and thoughts float on that stream. There is
a limit, however, to how many things the mind can be conscious at the same time. You are able to
fully process only a limited amount of the information available to you at any given time.
- Change blindless
Change blindness: a failure to notice large changes in one’s environment.
Because we cannot attend to everything in the vast array of visual information available, we are
often “blind” to large changes in our environments.
As change blindness illustrates, we can consciously perceive only a limited amount of information.
Large discrepancies exist between what most of us believe we see and what we actually see. Thus,
our perceptions of the world are often inaccurate, and we have little conscious awareness or our
perceptual failures. We simply do not know how much information we miss in the world around us.
Question
How do the limits on consciousness contribute to change blindless?
Major changes to the environment may go unnoticed when conscious awareness is focused
elsewhere.
Chapter summary → Change blindless illustrates how selective an individual’s attention can be: we
often do not notice large changes in an environment because we fail to pay attention.
,4.2 Attention is the gateway to conscious awareness
Attention involves being able to focus selectively on some things and not others. Attention selects
what enter your limited consciousness.
In 1953, the psychologist E. C. Cherry described attention this way: you can focus on a single
conversation in the midst of a chaotic party. Cherry developed selective-listing studies to examine
what the mind does with unattended information when a person pays attention to one task.
In 1958, the psychologist Donald Broadbent developed filter theory to explain the selective nature of
attention, he assumed that people have a limited capacity for sensory information. They screen
incoming information to let in only the most important material. In this model, attention is like a gate
that opens for important information and closes for irrelevant information.
- Endogenous versus exogenous attention
Endogenous attention: attention that is directed voluntarily
Exogenous attention; attention that is directed involuntarily y a stimulus.
Sometimes you decide what to attend to. Intentionally directing the focus of your attention is called
endogenous attention. When the focus of your attention is driven by a stimulus or event, it is called
exogenous attention.
- Attention as a window to consciousness in the brain
The impact of attention on how the brain processes stimuli happens early in the perceptual process.
The brain does respond to some unattended stimuli, suggesting they are perceived at some level, but
attending to and becoming consciously aware of a stimuli enhance and expands the brain’s response
to that stimulus.
In an early FMRI study, Frank Tong and colleagues (1998) examined the relationship between
conscious awareness and responses in the brain.
By showing patterns of brain activity that track conscious perception of different types of stimuli, this
early FRI study suggested it might be possible to observe conscious experience by looking at brain
activity.
People share common pattens of brain activity that provide insights into their conscious experiences.
4.3 Laptops in the classroom
Chapter summary → because consciousness is limited, attending to a laptop during class may make a
student more likely to miss the content of a lecture.
, 4.4 Unconscious processing can influence behavior
The influence of unconscious thoughts was at the center of Freud’s theories of human behavior. For
example, the classic mistake called a Freudian slip occurs when an unconscious thought is suddenly
expressed at an inappropriate time of in an inappropriate social context. Freud compared
consciousness to the tip of the iceberg that can be seen above water, whereas the unconscious,
below the water, was the driving force influencing behavior.
However, psychologists today agree that unconscious processes influence people’s thoughts and
actions as they go through their daily lives.
The processing of irrelevant details of attended stimuli can also unconsciously influence behavior.
- Priming
Priming: a facilitation in the response to a stimulus due to recent experience with that stimulus or a
related stimulus.
Priming occurs when the response to a stimulus is influenced of facilitated by recent experience with
that stimulus or a related stimulus. Priming can influence how you perceive an object, the speed or
ease with which you respond, and the choices you make.
- Subliminal perception
Subliminal perception: the process of information by sensory systems without conscious awareness.
Priming can also occur when people are unaware of the stimulus that influences behavior. Subliminal
perception occurs when stimuli are processed by sensory systems but, because of their short
durations of subtlety, do not reach consciousness.
Even if material presented subliminally has little or no effect on complex actions, such as buying
something you did not intend to buy, there is evidence that it can subtly influence behavior.
Subliminal cues may be most powerful when they work on people’s motivational states.
Question
Which type of subliminal messages are most likely to affect behavior?
Message that invoke emotion of motivation may subtly shift behavior, but such messages do not
affect complex behavior like buying of self-confidence.
Chapter summary → though and behavior can be influenced by stimuli that are not experienced at a
conscious level, as demonstrated by implicit biased and priming. Subliminal perception occurs when
people are influenced by hidden messages. Although stimulus can have some effects on people
without there awareness, there is currently no evidence that subliminal messages can compel people
to perform complex action against their will.
What is consciousness
Consciousness: one’s moment-to-moment subjective experience of the world.
You know you are conscious – that you have consciousness – because you are experiencing the
outside world through your senses and because you know that you are thinking.
Your subjective experiences of sensation are sometimes called qualia, meaning the qualitative
experiences of your conscious state.
Consciousness involves not just your sensations and thoughts but also your memories and anything
else you are experiencing in the moment.
4.1 Consciousness is limited
Most of the time, conscious experience is unified and coherent. In other words, in your subjective
experience, the world makes sense and one thought or perception flows from another.
Consciousness is often described as a continuous stream, and thoughts float on that stream. There is
a limit, however, to how many things the mind can be conscious at the same time. You are able to
fully process only a limited amount of the information available to you at any given time.
- Change blindless
Change blindness: a failure to notice large changes in one’s environment.
Because we cannot attend to everything in the vast array of visual information available, we are
often “blind” to large changes in our environments.
As change blindness illustrates, we can consciously perceive only a limited amount of information.
Large discrepancies exist between what most of us believe we see and what we actually see. Thus,
our perceptions of the world are often inaccurate, and we have little conscious awareness or our
perceptual failures. We simply do not know how much information we miss in the world around us.
Question
How do the limits on consciousness contribute to change blindless?
Major changes to the environment may go unnoticed when conscious awareness is focused
elsewhere.
Chapter summary → Change blindless illustrates how selective an individual’s attention can be: we
often do not notice large changes in an environment because we fail to pay attention.
,4.2 Attention is the gateway to conscious awareness
Attention involves being able to focus selectively on some things and not others. Attention selects
what enter your limited consciousness.
In 1953, the psychologist E. C. Cherry described attention this way: you can focus on a single
conversation in the midst of a chaotic party. Cherry developed selective-listing studies to examine
what the mind does with unattended information when a person pays attention to one task.
In 1958, the psychologist Donald Broadbent developed filter theory to explain the selective nature of
attention, he assumed that people have a limited capacity for sensory information. They screen
incoming information to let in only the most important material. In this model, attention is like a gate
that opens for important information and closes for irrelevant information.
- Endogenous versus exogenous attention
Endogenous attention: attention that is directed voluntarily
Exogenous attention; attention that is directed involuntarily y a stimulus.
Sometimes you decide what to attend to. Intentionally directing the focus of your attention is called
endogenous attention. When the focus of your attention is driven by a stimulus or event, it is called
exogenous attention.
- Attention as a window to consciousness in the brain
The impact of attention on how the brain processes stimuli happens early in the perceptual process.
The brain does respond to some unattended stimuli, suggesting they are perceived at some level, but
attending to and becoming consciously aware of a stimuli enhance and expands the brain’s response
to that stimulus.
In an early FMRI study, Frank Tong and colleagues (1998) examined the relationship between
conscious awareness and responses in the brain.
By showing patterns of brain activity that track conscious perception of different types of stimuli, this
early FRI study suggested it might be possible to observe conscious experience by looking at brain
activity.
People share common pattens of brain activity that provide insights into their conscious experiences.
4.3 Laptops in the classroom
Chapter summary → because consciousness is limited, attending to a laptop during class may make a
student more likely to miss the content of a lecture.
, 4.4 Unconscious processing can influence behavior
The influence of unconscious thoughts was at the center of Freud’s theories of human behavior. For
example, the classic mistake called a Freudian slip occurs when an unconscious thought is suddenly
expressed at an inappropriate time of in an inappropriate social context. Freud compared
consciousness to the tip of the iceberg that can be seen above water, whereas the unconscious,
below the water, was the driving force influencing behavior.
However, psychologists today agree that unconscious processes influence people’s thoughts and
actions as they go through their daily lives.
The processing of irrelevant details of attended stimuli can also unconsciously influence behavior.
- Priming
Priming: a facilitation in the response to a stimulus due to recent experience with that stimulus or a
related stimulus.
Priming occurs when the response to a stimulus is influenced of facilitated by recent experience with
that stimulus or a related stimulus. Priming can influence how you perceive an object, the speed or
ease with which you respond, and the choices you make.
- Subliminal perception
Subliminal perception: the process of information by sensory systems without conscious awareness.
Priming can also occur when people are unaware of the stimulus that influences behavior. Subliminal
perception occurs when stimuli are processed by sensory systems but, because of their short
durations of subtlety, do not reach consciousness.
Even if material presented subliminally has little or no effect on complex actions, such as buying
something you did not intend to buy, there is evidence that it can subtly influence behavior.
Subliminal cues may be most powerful when they work on people’s motivational states.
Question
Which type of subliminal messages are most likely to affect behavior?
Message that invoke emotion of motivation may subtly shift behavior, but such messages do not
affect complex behavior like buying of self-confidence.
Chapter summary → though and behavior can be influenced by stimuli that are not experienced at a
conscious level, as demonstrated by implicit biased and priming. Subliminal perception occurs when
people are influenced by hidden messages. Although stimulus can have some effects on people
without there awareness, there is currently no evidence that subliminal messages can compel people
to perform complex action against their will.
