Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CONTENTS
CONSCIOUSNESS .......................................................................................................................................................... 2
Four Proposed Functions of Consciousness .............................................................................................................. 2
Proposed Views on Source of Consciousness ........................................................................................................... 2
Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. ............................................................................................ 2
Consciousness is a property of protoplasm ........................................................................................................... 2
Consciousness is the result of learning .................................................................................................................. 2
Consciousness as a metaphysical imposition ........................................................................................................ 2
Hapless Spectator Theory...................................................................................................................................... 3
Problems ................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Emergent Evolution ............................................................................................................................................... 3
Consciousness as the nervous system itself .......................................................................................................... 3
What consciousness is or isn’t .............................................................................................................................. 3
LEARNING ..................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Associationist View Learning..................................................................................................................................... 4
Signal Learning ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
Skill Learning ......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Solution Learning: how can we figure out how to make something happen more?............................................. 4
Location of Consciousness ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Non-consciousness ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Memory and Unconscious Processing .......................................................................................................................... 5
Testing Implicit vs Explicit Memory ........................................................................................................................... 5
DREAMS ........................................................................................................................................................................ 6
Realist Theory of Dreams .......................................................................................................................................... 6
Today’s Theories ....................................................................................................................................................... 6
Heuristic Theory: Sigmund Freud .......................................................................................................................... 6
Physical Theory of Dreams .................................................................................................................................... 6
Why do we Dream?............................................................................................................................................... 7
CREATIVITY ! ................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Human Creativity ...................................................................................................................................................... 7
Inspirational Approach .......................................................................................................................................... 8
Romantic View ...................................................................................................................................................... 8
Creative Solutions ..................................................................................................................................................... 8
Approaches to Study of Creativity ............................................................................................................................ 8
Psychometric Approach......................................................................................................................................... 8
Information Processing Approach ....................................................................................................................... 10
Developmental View in Psychology ........................................................................................................................ 10
Working Definition for Creativity ............................................................................................................................ 11
CONSCIOUSNESS
What is consciousness?
• Behaviorists say that it doesn’t exist, only behavior is important
• Is it inner awareness?
PROBLEMS
1) Consciousness fluctuates
2) Cocktail party effect
3) Too strong a correlation between intensity/focus/awareness. Isn’t just a hapless spectator
EMERGENT EVOLUTION
o Consciousness emerged at some point in a very derivable form from its constituent parts. So it
was an…
o Emergent Property: something that is unexpected when you combine other things, and usually is
greater than the sum of the parts
o Leaves open the possibility for a new emergence – is a liberation from physics and chemistry - we
love it!
• Watson: (can someone tell me how he saved psychology, because I’m not sure about the order)
SIGNAL LEARNING
• classical or pavlovian condition
• Study:
o give light signal immediately followed by puff of air (unconditioned stimulus)
o eye learns to blink in response to the light (conditioned stimulus)
o if person consciously attempts to control response, learning doesn’t happen
consciousness gets in the way!
• Mere exposure effect:
o People rate music heard during pleasant dinner as more pleasant than music of similar type not
heard at dinner.
o Make them aware of the music, and learning abilities reduced
SKILL LEARNING
• consciousness takes on role of hapless spectator. It:
1) directs us at the outset
2) takes us to the task
3) gives us the goal..
and then we just react! (throwing coins in air)
SOLUTION LEARNING: HOW CAN WE FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN MORE?
• Postman: Had participant sit across from partner and give random words. Partner responds positively to
particular type of word (adjective, etc). Subject unconsciously gives more words of that type, and figures
it all out after 20 minutes.
o Subject is not conscious that he/she is learning
• Gardner: Had members intro psych class compliment people wearing red. 70-80% people wearing red and
they didn’t know why!
• Hefferline/Keenan/Harford/Keeline
o Recorded movement muscle small muscle in thumb
o Told subjects were recording all over body
o When thumb muscle moved, delayed onset of nasty noise
o Rate of thumb muscle twitch increased significantly without subject knowing
• so consciousness is not necessary for thinking. When we introspect we invent the thought process we
think we had.
• Faculty Psychologists: wanted to prove that reasoning is proof of consciousness. If we reason, then we
have logical thought. But for natural thought process to take place consciousness is not necessary. We
only need logic because most reasoning is not conscious, so we come in after the fact and justify our
thinking with logic.
LOCATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness has no location except for the one that we make up
NON-CONSCIOUSNESS
We know more about it than conscious processing!
• totally inaccessible to phenomenal awareness under any circumstance! (even if you tempt it with
chocolate covered peanuts). This is referred to as…
• Procedural knowledge an event, etc that occurs so automatically or effortlessly as to operate outside of
awareness (language, visual pattern recognition)
• Declarative Knowledge: accessible knowledge
• Louiki: talked about our language and the fact certain phrases sound better than others
• Foder: proposed that the mind has a set of innate cognitive modules that control these types of
procedural activities. Procedural knowledge can result from practice.
• Automatic:
o Happens in response to a given stimulus regardless of intent
o Can be detrimental if you aren’t paying attention (driving)
• With explicit memory tests, amnesiacs performed worse than normal subjects.
• In some trials used:
o Word fragment completion task: R A I N B O W give stimulus, and have to complete word. Hard
for normals too!
o Word stem completion task: C H A _ _
Both of these are implicit tasks, meaning they are indirect measures of memory. The
participant doesn’t have to recollect a specific learning episode with this test.
Amnesiacs performed just as well as normal on both tasks
• HM: Doctor used buzzy thing on hand every day when he shook HM’s hand to introduce himself. After
some time, HM didn’t want to shake the doctor’s hand, but didn’t know why!
o Information is getting in implicitly, unconsciously!
DREAMS
REALIST THEORY OF DREAMS
• believe that everything is grounded in the real. Voices in dreams have to come from somewhere
TODAY’S THEORIES
HEURISTIC THEORY: SIGMUND FREUD
• Ties dreams to consciousness
Successful because…
o Freud was a brilliant observer
o Had a sense of common sense realism, said that consciousness is directly awareness of the real
world
o Was a scientific physicalist
Energy is transformed and conserved and stored in the brain. When we go to sleep, the
energy is hard to repress. The body relaxes, the repressed energy is released in the
form of dreams
• The ego distorts the energy by conjuring up bizarre plot lines (dreams)
• Michelle (France) x 2 studied electrical activity of cat brains, and found that it fluctuates.
• Nathanial Clighton and Eugene A discovered REM sleep
o The brain is as active when you are asleep as when you are awake! Locus Cerulus disconnects the
motor and sensory parts of the brain. REM sleep led to physical theory of dreams.
Cycle of Dreams
1) 1-2 dreams per REM cycle
2) 3-6 REM cycles per night
• Dreams we Remember: Physicalist says that it’s a fluke that we remember anything.
• Hobson: We dream in cognitive styles, and meaning people find in their dreams depends on their
cognitive style.
• Stickgold: proposed a new model of dreaming
o It’s a bottom up process driven by stimulus rather than by conceptual thinking
o Pons: contains a portion of the reticular formation important for sleep and arousal.
FTG becomes active during REM sleep.
• Emotional state is the first thing attached to dream.
• Made available because FTG stimulates amygdala first (so should we see
gender differences)
• Steve Foote: during REM sleep there is a low level of chaos, and the brain ascribes meaning to this
mismatch of firing.
• So we can’t rely on dreamers to do the interpretation. How else can we study dreaming?
o Object transformation: are predictable. Transformations don’t appear to be random. They
reflect associations that most of us normally make.
o Plot Changes: can really be anything
• Neurons responsible for things in our dreams are the ones most active during the day
o They are primed
o Takes less activation for them to get involved
o Meaning is constructed by the waking mind, not the dreaming mind
WHY DO WE DREAM?
1) dream to consolidate memories
2) randomness can help with problem solving
3) self preservation mechanism
4) REM sleep is always made up for – so it’s important!
5) Dreams show us what remains when physical world taken away
CREATIVITY !
Dictionary: To bring into being or form out of nothing (impossible!)
• if we adhere to this definition, creativity is impossible
• psychological creativity: the production of new or novel ideas
o is this even possible? New ideas must be similar to something that already exists
HUMAN CREATIVITY
• unpredictable, but the main goal is science is to be able to predict things
• Two approaches
o Both assume creativity to be humanity’s crowning glory
o Neither has been critically examined
INSPIRATIONAL APPROACH
• creativity is mysterious and superhuman, requires divine intervention
• You either have it or you don’t
ROMANTIC VIEW
• Creativity is not divine, but is exception rather than rule
• Creative people are gifted with special talent
o It can be squandered or wasted, but not taught
• Creativity is fundamentally unanalyzable
PEOPLE
PROCESS
PRODUCT
PLACE/PERSUASIVENESS
• Simonson: once creative ideas are accepted, can have profound influence on people
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
• very Western, topics suited to math and science
• majority of what people consider art were created to fulfill certain goals
PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH
• uses psychometric studies to attempt to predict creative achievement
• Psychometric study: anything that tries to get a profile by asking a series of questions
• concerned with products of creativity
o Look at products, find people that created them, and try to figure out what makes those
individuals creative
• Psychometric tests show that creative people tend to have high IQ’s, but not all people with high IQ’s are
creative.
• The Brick Test may or may not test divergent/convergent thinking. We have to have some other
independent assessment of creativity to compare these results to.
• Torrance: developed tests that can correlate moderately well with latent measures of creativity
Torrance Test for Creativity
1) Given an image
2) Must come up with metaphor that is symbolically equivalent
1. scored on originality and acceptability
Biographical/Autobiographical Approach
• conclusions are based on observations
• Starts with the life of creative person and considers:
o Product
o The environment
o Persuasiveness of creator
• IQ and creativity are not strongly related, same goes for creativity and scholastic achievement
• Biographical material is most readily available for people’s whose creative ability is well developed
• Perkins: compares two different descriptions of writing a poem. Poet found out to have done more
research than alludes to… says poem came to him in a dream
• Wallace: studied biographical information, suggested four stage account of thinking:
1) Preparation – absorb background information
2) Incubation – let the unconscious processing begin!
3) Inspiration
4) Verification
Stages are not rigid, can shift from one to another
• Mendrick: any creative idea almost inevitably brings together two previously unrelated ideas
o Implausible and impossible that all possible combinations of ideas are tried
o Constraints arise (domain, time, environment, physical condition, etc)
• internal goals seem to motivate creativity more than external goals
• CSIKSZENT-MIHALYI: likened the work of the social field to that of natural selection. argued that three
main forces shapes creativity:
1) creative individual
2) social field determines which ideas are worth retaining
3) stability of society over time to ensure idea continues to be considered creative
• Johnson Laird: agrees that social factors are important in defining the constraints on a particular genre of
art.
o effects must be mediated by mind of individual. If you make an identical computer, constraints
are interpreted in the same way.
o Possession of skill set is important, a necessity but it isn’t sufficient
o Computers aren’t creative, but forgery is?
Creativity is non-deterministic?
• creative processes appeared non-deterministic because we don’t know what we’re looking at, we don’t
know how to recognize if something is creative or not, so sometimes we get lucky
• Johnson Laird attempted to come up with computational account of creativity, suggesting three possible
classes of algorithms that might be used:
1) Neo-Darwinian – combine old elements in a random way. Results are subjected to a
selection process for which only viable combinations are retained. Take many
iterations, and viable creative product emerges
2) Neo-mamarchian – initial combination stage is not random. It still makes use of old
elements, but there are constraints placed on what can be combined with what. Usually
produces several viable combinations. Then there’s a random selection process. If
constraints are tight enough, then we come up with one thing!
3) A mixture of los dos!
• Bowdoin: an idea is created for a particular person if that person could not have that idea before. The
only way is If they don’t have the knowledge or requisite skill set.
• Truscott demonstrated that origins of symphony are last total reconstruction of music in a long time.
What is prized in music isn’t development of symphony, but what is produced by symphony
o Creative works of art must also appeal to us in some sense… scientific theorem doesn’t have to
appeal though! In science it may be restructuring that is key:
Cognitive scientists focus on processes of the mind of individuals, but a total account of creativity has to take more
than thought process into account. You have to make reference to social factors. Many may not impinge on mind
of creative individual. Psychologists have taken many approaches to study of creativity:
• psychometric tests
• tests of divergent thinking (Guilford)
• Biographical and Autobiographical aspects or accounts of creativity
• Wallace IDd four stages creative process
o These stages have been reproduced in lab
• ideas drawn from Darwinian ideas of natural selection
• Laird uses evolutionary ideas too!
• Bowdoin suggested that creativity depends on having ideas you couldn’t have had before, give you have
machinery necessary for task and a historically educated audience