Download Psychology Lecture Notes: Ch. 6 States of Consciousness and more Lecture notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Psychology Lecture Notes: Ch. 6 States of Consciousness What is consciousness? What are the different types of attention? How can we focus on one thing, and ignore others? How do we multitask? What are some of the consequences of inattention? Compare Subconscious and Subliminal Processing How does this apply to attentive disorders? How does sleep affect consciousness? What is Consciousness? Consciousness is your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environments. Conscious: Information is readily processed in awareness Preconscious: If attended to, information is brought to consciousness Unconscious: information is not being processed in awareness Types of Attention Attention: selecting and prioritizing info from internal and external environments Passive Attention (Bottom-up Processing): controlled by the physical features of the stimulus (avoiding people while walking on the sidewalk) Active Attention (Top-Down): controlled by your goals (moving a ball toward a goal) Stages of Consciousness Selective Attention: attending to one source of info while simultaneously ignoring other stimuli (vision and hearing, salience of the stimuli) Some things capture our attention like italics and bold (AKA Attentional Capture) When we’re distracted, we’re most likely to remember simple details Focused Auditory Attention (AKA the Cocktail Party Effect) The Cocktail Party Effect: ability to attend to one stimulus while suppressing/ignoring other stimuli (why someone saying your name catches your attention) Divided Attention Simultaneously attending two+ tasks (called “multitasking” but not true multitasking) We divide attention quickly between tasks (we are bad at it 😬) Experience can improve multitasking Automaticity: fast effortless processing of information without conscious thought (such as singing while cleaning) Missing Aspects of the Visual Scene Inattentional Blindness: don’t notice the unexpected when paying attention to another task (AKA what happens when you text and drive) Change Blindness: failure to notice an obvious change Subconscious vs Subliminal Processing Subconscious: Information we consciously perceive but not aware it influences our behavior (music playing in a restaurant influences the type of wine purchased) Embodied Cognition: interplay between thoughts and behaviors (warm drink vs cold drink conversation influence) Subliminal: unconsciously processed information and not aware it affects our behavior (subvisual messages in movies) *Overall: no actual effect of subliminal messaging Attention Disorders ADHD: difficulty that interferes with task-oriented behaviors Symptoms: impulsivity, cannot sustain attention on task Successful treatments w/ meds and training (Ritalin and Adderall) (dopamine and Nor-ep agonists) Behavioral reward training Misconceptions: prescription stimulants do not improve the ability to learn (thinking, learning ability) trying other study methods are usually more effective Sleep We spend 1/3 of our lives asleep
