Psychology: Consciousness and Sleep

Consciousness

• Consciousness is the awareness of external events and internal sensations, including the self and thoughts about experiences.
• It changes from moment to moment, known as the stream of consciousness.
• Levels of awareness include:
  • Higher level of consciousness: controlled processes that require focused attention, like writing or reviewing for an exam.
  • Lower level of consciousness: automatic processes requiring minimal attention, like tying shoelaces.
  • Altered states of consciousness: mental states noticeably different from normal awareness, caused by factors like drugs, trauma, or sensory deprivation.
  • Subconscious awareness: where ideas incubate, like during class discussions or the tip of the tongue phenomenon.
  • No awareness: unconscious thought, according to Freud, is a reservoir of hidden desires and thoughts beyond conscious access.

Sleep

• Sleep is an altered state of unconsciousness.
• Reasons for sleep include:
  • Evolutionary perspective: conserving energy at night.
  • Restoring energy: replenishing the brain and body, especially during REM sleep when neurotransmitters are not released.
  • Physical growth and brain development: release of growth hormones during deep sleep.

Biological Rhythms

• Periodic physiological fluctuations in the body controlled by biological clocks.
• Examples include:
  • Annual or seasonal cycles: migration, hibernation, eating habits.
  • 24-hour cycles: circadian rhythms that regulate daily behavior and physiological changes, like sleep apnea.

Dreams

• Theories of dreaming:
  • Wish fulfillment: manifest content (surface meaning) and latent content (hidden meaning).
  • Cognitive: uses the same mental processes as when we're awake to solve problems and think creatively.
  • Activation-synthesis: the brain synthesizes neural signals from lower brain activity to make sense of what's happening during sleep.
  • Dream-for-survival: dreams have an evolutionary origin.

Hypnosis

• A trance-like state of heightened suggestibility.
• Steps involve:
  • Creating a quiet environment.
  • Explaining the process to the participant.
  • Focusing the participant on a specific object or image.
  • Giving suggestions once the participant is relaxed.
• People undergoing hypnosis do not lose control completely.
• Hypnosis susceptibility varies greatly, with approximately 5% completely resistant and 15% highly susceptible.
• Theories about hypnosis:
  • Divided consciousness: a split state with one part following the hypnotist's suggestions and another part acting as a "hidden observer."
  • Not a significantly different state of consciousness: brain waves haven't shown a substantial difference, and no other physiological changes are observed.
• Values of hypnosis:
  • Controlling pain.
  • Reducing smoking.
  • Treating psychological disorders.
  • Assisting law enforcement.
  • Improving athletic performance.

Meditation

• A learned technique for refocusing attention that induces an altered state of consciousness.
• Practices include:
  • Repeating a mantra (sound, word, or syllable).
  • Focusing on a picture, flame, or bodily sensation.
• The key is to become unaware of outside stimulation and achieve a different state of awareness.
• Benefits:
  • Gaining new insights.
  • Improving health through reduced oxygen usage, heart rate, and blood pressure and altered brain wave patterns.

Learning

• A relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience.
• Maturation is a biological process that unfolds naturally.
• Changes in behavior can result from maturation or practice and experience.

Habituation

• A decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated exposure.
• Allows us to ignore things that no longer provide new information.
• Most learning is more complex than habituation.

Classical Conditioning (CC)

• Learning where a neutral stimulus (NS) comes to elicit a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally elicits that response.
• Key concepts in CC:
  • Neutral Stimulus (NS): A stimulus that doesn't naturally elicit the desired response before conditioning.
  • Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that naturally evokes a response without training.
  • Unconditioned Response (UCR): A natural, innate response to the UCS.
  • Conditioned Response (CR): A response that, after conditioning, follows the previously neutral stimulus.
• The timing and sequence of UCS and NS presentations are crucial for effective conditioning.
• Applications of CC:
  • Emotional responses, like fear of spiders or phobias.
  • Food associations with specific brands, like McDonalds or Jollibee.
  • Avoidance behavior, like avoiding dentists due to past pain experiences.
  • Post traumatic stress disorder.
  • Pleasant experiences, like associating the smell of a perfume with happy thoughts.

Desensitization/Counter Conditioning

• A process that reverses the associations established through classical conditioning.
• Involves gradually exposing individuals to fear-provoking stimuli without the negative consequences, allowing them to unlearn their fear responses.

Extinction

• Occurs when a previously conditioned response decreases in frequency and eventually disappears.
• It results from the absence of the pairing between the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus.
• Spontaneous recovery can occur when the extinguished response reappears after a period of time.

Stimulus Generalization

• After a stimulus is conditioned to produce a response, similar stimuli are likely to evoke the same response.
• The greater the similarity between stimuli, the more likely generalization will occur.

Stimulus Discrimination

• The ability to distinguish between different stimuli, where only one stimulus elicits a conditioned response.
• This happens when two stimuli are sufficiently distinct from each other.

Explore the complexities of consciousness, including levels of awareness and altered states. Delve into the significance of sleep as an altered state of unconsciousness and its various functions. Test your knowledge on how these concepts interact and affect mental processes.