Psych 100

October 11th 2016

Chapter 4.1:
Consciousness
Study Questions: What does research tell us about combining the activities of
driving and talking on a cell phone? What effect does using hand-free
devices have on our driving performance?
What is consciousness?
- Is it something we develop or are we born with it?
- Panpsychism: The idea that all objects possess at some level a
consciousness or mind.
Self-Consciousness
- Self-recognition in humans
>The paint test: Toddlers are placed in a room and paint is smeared on
their head at
some point without them noticing. They are placed
in front of a mirror to see if they
can recognize themselves in the
mirror/ their appearance has been altered.
>Results: Children dont have self-recognition until 16-28 months of
age.
-Self recognition in other species
> Chimps and great apes
> Some sea mammals
> Elephants
> Magpies
Consciousness: Our subjective experience of the world and of our mental
activity.
- Cartesian Dualism (Descartes) : The theatre of the mind
Materialism
- The brain enables the mind
- Can consciousness be studied?
The subjective nature of consciousness
- Qualia: The properties of our subjective, phenomenology awareness.
Easy questions about consciousness (Chalmers)
- How do we discriminate, integrate information, report mental
statistics, focus
attention, etc.
- Solution: Specify a mechanism
- Materialistic approach
Hard questions about consciousness
- Why do qualia exist?
- Why is there a subjective component to experience?

Psych 100
October 11th 2016

What is attention?
Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in
clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously
possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of
consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in
order to deal effectively with others. William James
Selective attention
- Shadowing: Listening to something that is different in each ear and
saying out loud
what you hear in only one ear
> Bottleneck theory:
The brain selects early on what information to
process (Early selection)
> Bottleneck metaphor (Cherry, 1953):
What do we perceive in the unattended ear?
- Physical characteristics
- Not the meaning of words
> Problems with early selection (Mouray 1953):
When the persons name was played in their unattended
ear they said it
out loud.
> Bottleneck theory:
The brain selects what information to process after pattern
recognition.
Selection is based on pertinence and
strength. (Late selection)
Capacity Theory:
- Attention as processing occurs
- Selective attention vs divided attention
- Different tasks require different amount of mental effort
- Automatic vs Controlled Processing:
- e.g.: Attentional resources and driving
- e.g.: Atomicity and word recognition: The Stroop effect (you
cant ignore
words)
Kahnemans model
- Limited resources to allocate different tasks
- Spreading attention out over multiple tasks results in performance
decrements.
e.g.: Mowbrays Experiment (1953): Trying to copy notes and
listen to a lecture
at the
same time. Subjects could only do
one task efficiently.
e.g.: Spelke et als study: Same as Mowbrays except the task
was repeated
attempted over a
summer, by the end students
displayed better results.

Psych 100
October 11th 2016
Disadvantages to atomicity
- Change Blindness: Not noticing simple changes in physical
appearances.

The Cell Phone Diversion.

Strayers Research.
- Used a driving simulator
- Single vs dual task simulation
- Hands-free vs Hand-held: NO DIFFERENCE
Can drivers recognize objects they have fixated on?
- Recognition accuracy for fixated objects drops 50% when conversing
even when
fixation duration was manipulated.
Inattentional blindness hypothesis
- Strategic reallocation
- Importance of objects
- Performance decreases during dual tasks
- Even when fixation duration is controlled
- Importance of objects has no effect
Conversing on a phone vs with a passenger
- 2nd pair of eyes
- e.g.: Simulation got two drivers to drive 8 miles then turn off an exit.
> Only 12% with passengers missed the exit
> 50% talking on a cell phone missed the exit
Drinking and Driving vs Cell Phone
- Simulation: Follow a car
- Both groups show impairment
- Impairment is different in cell phones but still bad