Physiological state of being engaged with the environment

Determined by reticular activating system

Higher-level conscious

Lower-level conscious

Altered State of conscious

Subconscious Awarness

No Awarness

Higher-Level Consciousness

Controlled Processes

Most alert states of human consciousness

Active focus of efforts toward a goal

Require attention and effort

Slower than automatic processes

think vs. react

Automatic Processes

Daydreaming

States of consciousness requiring little attention

Do not interfere with other ongoing activities

Require less conscious effort than controlled processes

Lies between active consciousness and dreaming

Mind wandering is one type of daydreaming

Altered State of Conciousness 

Produced by:

Drugs

Fatigue

Sensory Deprivation

Hypnosis

Waking Subconscious Awarness

Sleep and Dreams

Processes just below surface of awarness

Can occur simultaneously along parallel tracks

Lower level of awarness than daydreaming

Some degree of awarness of external stimuli

Knocked out by a blow

Anesthetized

In a deep, prolonged unconscious state

Periodic physiological fluctuations in body

"Biological Clocks"

Daily behavioral or physiological cycle

Sleep/walk, body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar

Ultradian rhythms (arousal/sleepness all day in 90 minute cycles)

24 hour intervals

Can get thrown off regular schedules

Jet Travel, changing work shifts, insomnia

Bright Light

Melatonin

Restoration

Adaption

Growth

Memory

Truoble paying attention to tasks and solving problems

Decreased brain activity

Can influence moral judgement

Americans (in general)

Adolescents

Sleep patterns change in middle/late adulthood

Fast, irregular, low-amplitude electrical activity

Reflect concentration and awarness

Highest in frequency, lowest in amplitude

More desynchronous, or inconsistent

About to sleep

Relaxed, but still awake

Brain waves slowed down, increased in amplitude

More synchronous, or regular

Drowsy sleep

Myoclonic jerks, or sudden muscle movements

EEG characterized by slow, high-amplitude theta waves

Decreased muscle activity

No conscious awarness of environment

Theta waves interspered with sleep spindles

Charachterized by delta waves: slowest and highest-amplitude brain waves

Referred to as delta sleep, the deepest sleep

Bedwetting, sleep walking, sleep taliking

Stage 3 -> less than 50% delta waves

Stage 4 -> more than 50% delta waves

Active stage during which dreaming occurs

Fast wave activity, similar to relaxed wakefulness

Likely plays a role in memory

Non-REM sleep -> Stages 1-4

Five stages of sleep

90-100 minutes

Recurs several times a night

REM stages become progressively longer

Core of brain stem

Distinct pattern of neurotransmitter activity during each sleep stage (seratonin and norepinephrine-lighter, acetylcholine - deeper)

Plays crucial role in sleep and arousal

Serotonin

Epinephrine

Acetylcholine

Dreams as subconcious cognative processing

Criticism: Lack of attention to roles of brain structures and activity in dreaming

alter consciousness

modify perceptions

change moods

Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA)

Nucleus Accumbens

Activation of limbic and prefrontal areas of brain

Alcohol

Barbiturates

Tranquilizers

Opiates

Caffeine

Nicotine

Amphetamines

Cocaine

Marijuana

MDMA (Ecstasy)

LSD

Altered state on consciousness 

Psychological state of altered attention/expectation

Nature of Hypnosis (4 steps)

Minimizing distractions, maximizing comfort

Concentration on something specific

Information about what to expect in hypnotic state

Suggestion of events or feelings already occuring

Hidden Observer

Hypnosis as altered state

Social Cognitive Behavior View of Hypnosis

Cognitive Factors

-Attitudes

-Expectations

-Beliefs

Social Context

For depression panic attacks, anxiety

For chronic pain, stress, psoriasis

Hypnogogic reverie -> Feeling of wellness

Increased activation in basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex

Decreases in anterior cingulate

Things you can see

Theory of learning that focuses solely on observable behaviors

Approach discounts importance of mental activity

Classical Conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Automatic, without prior learning 

Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

Association, after pairing stimuli

Conditioned (learned) Stimulus (CS)

Conditioned Response (CR)

Consequences change probability of behavior

Operant = Behavior

Consequences contingent on behavior

Positive outcomes strengthen behavior

Negative outcomes weaken behavior

Controlled conditions to study operant conditioning

Operant (Lover press by rat) -> Consequences (food)

Ratio (number of behaviors) vs. Interval (time elapsed)

Fixed (predictable) vs. Variable (unpredictable)

Removal (taking away) of something pleasent

Example: Time Out (from reinforcement)

Also called behavior modification

Use of operant conditioning principles to change human behavior

All human behavior understood as being influenced by rewards and punishments

Also called imitation or modeling

Learning when behavior is observed and imitated

Vicarious Reinforcement and Vicarious Punishment

Unreinforced learning not immediatly reflected in behavior

Study: Rats ina maze wandering around may learn

Insight Learning (Kohler)

Problem solving in which sudden insight, or understanding, occurs

Thinking "outside the box"

Stick Problem

Box Problem

Permits certain kinds of learning

Inhibits other kinds of learning

Encoding

Storage

Retrieval

Process by which information enters memory storage

some enters automatically

other information requires effort (rehearsal)

Focusing on specific aspects of experience while ignoring others

Limitation of brain's resources

Leads to worse memory recall

Attending to several things simultaneously

"Mulit-tasking"

Continuum from shallow to deep

Deeper processing, better memory

Number of different connections made

Evident in physical activity of brain

Verbal Code- a word or label

Image Code- an image

Memory for pictures better than memory for words

Pictures stored as both image codes and verbal codes

Retained over time

Represented in memory

Sensory memory- fraction of a second

Short-term memory- up to 30 seconds

Long-term memory- up to a lifetime

Auditory sensory memory

Retained for up to several seconds

Visual sensory memory

Retained for only about 1/4 second

Grouping information into higher-order units (more meanigful)

Briefly stores speech-based information

Stores visual and spatial information

Autobiographical information about where, when, and what of life's happenings

A moment in time- a car pulling up

Procedural Memory(Skills)

Priming

Classical Conditioning

Preexisting mental concept or framework to organize and interpret information

Walking into a restaurant

Schema for an event

Saying your sorry

Memory located in specific sets or circuits of neurons

Neurotransmitters play a role in forging connections

Long term potentiation

- Simultaneous activation of neurons strengthens memory

Hippocampus

Temporal Lobes

Limbic System (Amygdala)

Cerebellum

Temporal Lobes

Hippocampus

Tendency to recall items at beginning and end of lists

Primacy Effect

Recency Efffect

Information present at time of learning tends to be effective as retrieval cue

State dependent memory

Memory of emotionally significant events

Often recalled with vivid imagery

9/11

Defense mechanism by which person, traumitized by an event, forgets it - and then forgets act of forgetting it

May be special case of motivated forgetting

Not 'forgotten' but, rather, never encoded

Information never entered into long-term memory

Neurochemical memory "trace" disintegrates over time

Cannot, alone, explain forgetting

Computer analogy for human cognition and brain

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Allow generalizations

Allow association of experiences and objects

Aid memory

Provide clues about how to react to particular object or experience

Find and Frame Problems

Develop Good Problem-Solving Strategies

Evaluate Solutions

Rethink and Redefine Problems and Solutions

Setting intermediate goals

Defining intermediate problems

Using prior strategy

Failing to look at problem from fresh, new perspective

Prediction about possibility of event based on recalling or imagining similar events

Base Rate Fallacy

Producing many solutions to same problem

Brainstorming

Flexibility and playful thinking

Inner motivation

Willingness to face risk

Objective evaluation of work

Uniform procedures for administrating and scoring

Norms, or performance standards for test

Mental Age (MA) vs. Chronological Age (CA)

IQ = MA/CA * 100

From urban, rather than rural, environments

Of middle, rather than low, socioeconomic status

Who are white, rather than African American

Intelligence tests intended to be culturally unbiased

Include questions familiar to people of all backgrounds

Or includes no verbal questions

Proportion of observable differences explained by genes

Approximently 75% for intelligence

Increases with age, due to choice of environment

Statistics provide information about group, not individual

Can change over time and across groups

Phenomenon of rapidly increasing IQ test scores

May be due to rising levels of education, or other environmental factors

IQ > 130

High intelligence and/or superior talent in some area

Product of both heredity and environment

Condition of limited mental ability

Low IQ < 70

Difficulty adapting

Exhibited these charactersitics by age 18

Analytical Intelligence

Creative Intelligence

Practical Intelligence

Verbal

Mathematical

Spatial

Bodily-kinesthetic

Musical

Interpersonal

Intrapersonal

Naturalist

Existentialist

Language may determine/cause way we think (Whorf)

Or language may merely reflect way we think

Bilogical prewiring to learn language in humans

Imitation not adequate to learn language