Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Overview
A. Dualism vs. Monism
a. Dualism
1. humans consist of thought and matter
i. matter- everything that has substance
ii. thought - nonmaterial. Arises from, but is independent of the brain. Gives
humans free will.
b. Monism
1. thought and matter are aspects of the same substance
2. thought stops existing when the body dies
B. Consciousness
a. Our level of awareness about ourselves and our environment
Levels of Consciousness
A. Mere-Exposure Effect
a. We prefer stimuli that we have seen before over novel stimuli, even if we don’t consciously
remember seeing it
B. Priming
a. Research participants respond more quickly/accurately to questions they’ve seen before, even if
they don’t remember it
C. Blind Sight
a. One level of consciousness isn’t getting visual information
b. Their behavior demonstrates that another level can see
c. They report being blind
D. Types of Levels
a. Conscious level
1. information about yourself and your environment that you are aware of
b. Nonconscious level
1. body processes controlled by the mind that we’re not aware of
c. Preconscious level
1. information about yourself or your environment that you aren’t thinking about, but
could be
d. Subconscious level
1. information of which we aren’t consciously aware
2. must exist due to behavior
3. proof: priming and mere exposure effect
e. Unconscious level
1. some events/feelings that are unacceptable to the conscious mind are repressed into it
Sleep
A. Sleep Cycle
a. Circadean rhythm
1. metabolic and thought processes follow a pattern
b. Sleep onset
1. the period when we are falling asleep
2. possible mild hallucinations
3. alpha waves
i. produced when we are drowsy but awake
c. Theta waves
1. high frequency, low amplitude
2. as we go from awake to stage 1 to stage 2, they get slower and higher in amplitude
3. stage 1, stage 2, awake
d. Sleep spindles
1. stage 2
2. short bursts of rapid brain waves
e. Delta sleep
1. stages 3 and 4
2. slow-wave sleep
3. delta waves
4. the slower the waves, the deeper the sleep
f. REM sleep
1. dreams occur
2. improves memory
Psychology: States of Consciousness Edited by Ali Hameed Khan