Summary Myers Psychology Book - Chapter 3 Notes

Myers Ch 3

 Brain States and Consciousness
o Consciousness: our awareness of ourselves and environment
 Reflects what is happening
 Altered by hypnosis, drugs, meditation
 Helps us reach long-term goals
 Cognition: mental processes
o Clinical impairments
 In a coma
 Still there is brain activity
 Vegetative state
 Ex: asked someone who could not move to imagine playing tennis
and her brain lit up where her arm movements would be
controlled
o Dual Processing
 Simultaneous conscious and nonconscious processing streams
 Blindsight
 Responding to visual stimuli without consciously experiencing
them
 Readiness potentials
 Getting prepared to do something
 When the brain signals an action before the conscious mind
perceives it and performs that action
o Attention
 Selective attention
 Focusing conscious awareness on one stimulus
 Selective inattention
 Unaware of most stimuli
o Focusing on one thing and ignoring the rest
 Research studies
o Basketball
 Asked to press a key every time someone in a black
shirt passed the ball
 Completely missed a lady walk across the court
 Repeated again with someone in a gorilla suit
 He paused halfway through and now only
half of the research subjects failed to notice
him
o Deafness
 Asked to pay attention to lady’s voice and missed a
man saying “Im a gorilla”
o Cancer