Psychology exam: 2
Introduction to Psychology I (PS101) - Psychology Exam 2: Midterm Review and Practice Notes
Past midterm 1:
Lecture 1: the study of consciousness,
What is consciousness: anything you are thinking about right now, it is awareness of your surroundings and yourself.
- consciousness is a stream- continuing flow of human thoughts- (William James)
Consciousness contains many altered states including: being asleep, a dream, hypnosis, meditation, anesthesia and
proactive drugs
Altered states of consciousness: is any change in a person’s ability to be fully aware of their external surroundings
and internal states.
States of Consciousness – This refers to our overall level of awareness of both the external environment and our
internal mental processes.
Examples: wakefulness, sleep, dreaming, hypnosis, meditation, or drug-induced states. It’s about how alert or
conscious we are.
Contents of Consciousness – This refers to the specific experiences, thoughts, feelings, or perceptions that occupy
our awareness at any given moment.
Examples: thinking about what to eat for lunch, remembering a song, feeling anxious, or noticing the sound of
traffic.
Attention is a key part of our conscious awareness. The relationship between attention and consciousness is the topic
of lively debate in psychology. One possibility is that attention is a prerequisite for consciousness
- We must have awareness in our daily lives.
Consciousness depends on the interaction of many brain regions. When you walk into a restaurant and smell freshly
baked bread, your brain combines sights and smells into a single meaningful experience. Scientists are now trying to
identify the minimal neural mechanisms required for a specific conscious experience.
Inattentional blindness: failure to notice things around us which we are not paying attention to.
Different areas of the brain are responsible for attention and for one's awareness of that attention.
Intralaminar nuclei and midline nuclei of the thalamus are responsible for this.
Damage bilaterally= coma
Damage unilaterally = loss of awareness in one half of the body
Reticular Formation: Located in the brainstem.
- Maintains wakefulness and arousal.
- Electrical stimulation causes animals to wake.
- Damage results in inability to maintain wakefulness and can lead to coma-like states.
- Important for transitioning from sleep to wakefulness.
Thalamus and Hypothalamus:
Hypothalamus: Receives signals from the reticular formation.
- Helps maintain alertness by sending activation signals to the cortex.
- Damage to the orexin neurotransmitter system can cause narcolepsy.
Thalamus:
- Acts as the brain’s sensory relay station.
- Routes sensory information to the cortex and works in cortical-thalamic loops.
- Broad damage can cause deep coma.
- Damage to one hemisphere leads to loss of awareness on that side of the body or visual field
Cerebral Cortex:
- Critical for the content of conscious awareness.
The visual cortex enables awareness of seeing.
- The left hemisphere supports verbal awareness and speech.
- The right hemisphere supports nonverbal forms of awareness, such as tactile recognition
, Psychology exam: 2
Frontal-parietal networks control selective attention.
Blindsight (Weiskrantz): Caused by damage to the primary visual cortex. Patients report blindness but can still point
to objects or avoid obstacles, Demonstrates that attention to stimuli can occur without conscious awareness.
Split-Brain Research. Left hemisphere responsible for verbal processing and speech production. Right hemisphere
responsible for nonverbal awareness and object recognition through touch.
- In intact brains, both hemispheres work together to create a unified conscious experience.
Development of Consciousness
Infants: Babies can attend, plan, and form concepts.
- Difficult to assess conscious awareness directly because they cannot verbalize experiences.
Rouge Test
Red makeup placed on the baby’s nose and viewed in a mirror.
- Touching their own nose indicates self-recognition.
- Most infants pass around 18 months.
Some animals (chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants) also pass.
Two Theories of Development
Early cognitive abilities suggest infants have a basic form of self-awareness.
Another view argues consciousness depends on language and symbolic thinking, which develops around 22 months.
Preconsciousness: Level of awareness in which information can become readily available to consciousness if
necessary
- Remembering lunch last week
Unconscious state: — state in which information is not easily accessible to conscious awareness
- Saw a stranger who reminded you of that person. Unexpectedly, minutes or days later the name of the
person or the song you could not recover earlier jumps right out of your memory into your conscious
awareness.
Automatic behaviours are actions we perform so routinely that we no longer pay conscious attention to them.
Because they require little awareness, the brain doesn’t store detailed memories of each instance—like brushing
your teeth every day—so we usually don’t remember doing them.
Explicit memory
– involves pieces of knowledge that we are fully aware of
Implicit memory– knowledge that we have stored in memory that we are not typically aware of or able to recall at
will
Skills we have acquired that have become “automatic”
Information we have that we no longer reflect directly on when making decisions.
Unconscious decision-making – are there decisions that we make unconsciously?
- Freud viewed the conscious like an iceberg
Introduction to Psychology I (PS101) - Psychology Exam 2: Midterm Review and Practice Notes
Past midterm 1:
Lecture 1: the study of consciousness,
What is consciousness: anything you are thinking about right now, it is awareness of your surroundings and yourself.
- consciousness is a stream- continuing flow of human thoughts- (William James)
Consciousness contains many altered states including: being asleep, a dream, hypnosis, meditation, anesthesia and
proactive drugs
Altered states of consciousness: is any change in a person’s ability to be fully aware of their external surroundings
and internal states.
States of Consciousness – This refers to our overall level of awareness of both the external environment and our
internal mental processes.
Examples: wakefulness, sleep, dreaming, hypnosis, meditation, or drug-induced states. It’s about how alert or
conscious we are.
Contents of Consciousness – This refers to the specific experiences, thoughts, feelings, or perceptions that occupy
our awareness at any given moment.
Examples: thinking about what to eat for lunch, remembering a song, feeling anxious, or noticing the sound of
traffic.
Attention is a key part of our conscious awareness. The relationship between attention and consciousness is the topic
of lively debate in psychology. One possibility is that attention is a prerequisite for consciousness
- We must have awareness in our daily lives.
Consciousness depends on the interaction of many brain regions. When you walk into a restaurant and smell freshly
baked bread, your brain combines sights and smells into a single meaningful experience. Scientists are now trying to
identify the minimal neural mechanisms required for a specific conscious experience.
Inattentional blindness: failure to notice things around us which we are not paying attention to.
Different areas of the brain are responsible for attention and for one's awareness of that attention.
Intralaminar nuclei and midline nuclei of the thalamus are responsible for this.
Damage bilaterally= coma
Damage unilaterally = loss of awareness in one half of the body
Reticular Formation: Located in the brainstem.
- Maintains wakefulness and arousal.
- Electrical stimulation causes animals to wake.
- Damage results in inability to maintain wakefulness and can lead to coma-like states.
- Important for transitioning from sleep to wakefulness.
Thalamus and Hypothalamus:
Hypothalamus: Receives signals from the reticular formation.
- Helps maintain alertness by sending activation signals to the cortex.
- Damage to the orexin neurotransmitter system can cause narcolepsy.
Thalamus:
- Acts as the brain’s sensory relay station.
- Routes sensory information to the cortex and works in cortical-thalamic loops.
- Broad damage can cause deep coma.
- Damage to one hemisphere leads to loss of awareness on that side of the body or visual field
Cerebral Cortex:
- Critical for the content of conscious awareness.
The visual cortex enables awareness of seeing.
- The left hemisphere supports verbal awareness and speech.
- The right hemisphere supports nonverbal forms of awareness, such as tactile recognition
, Psychology exam: 2
Frontal-parietal networks control selective attention.
Blindsight (Weiskrantz): Caused by damage to the primary visual cortex. Patients report blindness but can still point
to objects or avoid obstacles, Demonstrates that attention to stimuli can occur without conscious awareness.
Split-Brain Research. Left hemisphere responsible for verbal processing and speech production. Right hemisphere
responsible for nonverbal awareness and object recognition through touch.
- In intact brains, both hemispheres work together to create a unified conscious experience.
Development of Consciousness
Infants: Babies can attend, plan, and form concepts.
- Difficult to assess conscious awareness directly because they cannot verbalize experiences.
Rouge Test
Red makeup placed on the baby’s nose and viewed in a mirror.
- Touching their own nose indicates self-recognition.
- Most infants pass around 18 months.
Some animals (chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants) also pass.
Two Theories of Development
Early cognitive abilities suggest infants have a basic form of self-awareness.
Another view argues consciousness depends on language and symbolic thinking, which develops around 22 months.
Preconsciousness: Level of awareness in which information can become readily available to consciousness if
necessary
- Remembering lunch last week
Unconscious state: — state in which information is not easily accessible to conscious awareness
- Saw a stranger who reminded you of that person. Unexpectedly, minutes or days later the name of the
person or the song you could not recover earlier jumps right out of your memory into your conscious
awareness.
Automatic behaviours are actions we perform so routinely that we no longer pay conscious attention to them.
Because they require little awareness, the brain doesn’t store detailed memories of each instance—like brushing
your teeth every day—so we usually don’t remember doing them.
Explicit memory
– involves pieces of knowledge that we are fully aware of
Implicit memory– knowledge that we have stored in memory that we are not typically aware of or able to recall at
will
Skills we have acquired that have become “automatic”
Information we have that we no longer reflect directly on when making decisions.
Unconscious decision-making – are there decisions that we make unconsciously?
- Freud viewed the conscious like an iceberg
