PSYC 200

Consciousness and the Two-Track Mind

Consciousness is....
● Alertness; being awake vs. being unconscious
● Self-awareness; the ability to think about self
● Having free will; being able to make a “conscious” decision
● A person’s mental content, thoughts, and imaginings

To explore the nature of consciousness, it helps to first choose a definition

● Many psychologists define Consciousness as: “our awareness of ourselves and

our environment.”
○ Aren’t animals aware of their environment?
○ If so, is our awareness different?
○ Possibly, because we have (uniquely?) a narrative experience of that
awareness.

Altered States and Forms of Consciousness

Some states occur Daydreaming Drowsiness Dreaming

spontaneously

Some are Hallucinations Orgasm Food or oxygen

physiologically salvation
induced

Some are Sensory deprivation Hypnosis Meditation

physiologically
induced
Conscious vs. Unconscious activity
The dual track mind

Conscious “high” track: Unconscious “low” track:

Our minds take deliberate actions we Our minds perform automatic action,
know we are doing often without being aware of them

Examples: problems solving, naming an Examples: walking, acquiring phobias,

object, defining a word processing sensory details into
perceptions and memories

Example of Dual Processing: Sensation and Perception

● Automatic processing: Conscious “high” track says, “I saw a bird!”

● Unconsciously, we see color, motion, form, and depth.

Consequences of a Dual-Track Conscious/Unconscious Mind

● Blindsight
● Selective Attention
● Selective Inattention
○ Inattentional blindness
○ Change blindness
○ Choice blindness
Blindsight: two tracks of parallel processing

Case study: A woman with brain damage, but NO eye damage, was unable to use her
eyes to report what was in front of her. BUT, she was able to use her eyes to help her
take actions such as putting mail in slots.

● Describing the mail and the slot:

○ The “high road,” or conscious track, in this case known as the visual
perception track

● Judging the size and distance well enough to put the mail in the slot: the “low
road,” or unconscious, automatic track in this case known as the visual action
track

Selective Attention
● There are millions of bits of information coming at our senses every second
● So, we have the skill of selective attention; our brain is able to choose a focus
and select what to notice

Selective Attention and Conversation

● The good news: we can focus our mental spotlight on a conversation even when
other conversations are going on around us.
○ This is known as the cocktail party effect
● The bad news: we can hyperfocus on a conversation while driving a car, putting
the driver and passengers at risk

Selective Attention - what we focus on, what we notice

Selective Inattention - what we are not focused on, what we do not notice

Selective inattention refers to our failure to notice part of our environment when our
attention is directed elsewhere.

● Selective attention:
○ Inattentional blindness
○ Change blindness
Inattentional Blindness
● Various experiments show that when our attention is focused, we miss seeing
what others may think is obvious to see (such as gorilla, or a unicyclist)
● Some “magic” tricks take advantage of this phenomenon

Change Blindness
● Two-thirds of people didn’t notice when the person they were giving directions
to was replaced by a similar looking person

● By the way, did you notice whether the replacement person was in the same or
different clothes?

Sleep as a State of Consciousness

● When sleeping, are we fully unconscious and “dead to the world?”
● Or is the window to consciousness open?

Consider that:
● We move around, but how do we stop ourselves from falling out of bed?
● We sometimes incorporate real-world noises into our dreams
● Some noises (our own baby’s cry) wakes us more easily than others
How do we learn about sleep and dreams?
● We can monitor EEG/brain waves and muscle movements during sleep.
● We can expose the sleeping person to noise and words, and then examine the
effects on the brain (waves) and mind (memory).
● We can wake people and see which mental state (e.g. dreaming) goes with
which brain/body state.
Falling asleep
● Yawning creates a brief boost in alertness as your brain metabolism is slowing
down.
● Your breathing slows down.
● Brain waves become slower and irregular
● You may have hypnagogic (while falling asleep) hallucinations.
● Your brain waves change from alpha waves to NREM-1.

Non-REM Sleep Stages

Getting deeper into sleep...but not dreaming yet

● N1 - sleep may experience fantastic images resembling hallucinations - sensory

experiences that occur without sensory stimulus
● 20 minutes of N2 sleep - with its periodic sleep spindles - bursts of rapid,
rhythmic brain-wave activity that aid memory processing
● 30 minutes of N3 - brain emits large, slow delta waves and the person is hard to
awaken
REM Sleep

● Eugene Aserinsky’s discovery (1953): dreams occurred during periods of wild

brain activity and rapid eye movements [REM sleep]

What happens during REM sleep?

● Heart rate rises and breathing becomes rapid.
● “Sleep paralysis” occurs when the brainstem blocks the motor cortex’s
messages and the muscles don’t move.
● This is sometimes known as “paradoxical sleep”; the brain is active but the body
is immobile
● Genitals are aroused (not caused by dream content)

Stages of Sleep: 90 Minute Cycles During 8 Hours of Sleep

● Duration of REM sleep increases the longer you remain asleep.
● With age, there are more awakenings and less deep sleep
Sleep disorders
● Insomnia: persistent inability to fall asleep or stay sleep
● Narcolepsy: (“numb seizure”): sleep attacks, even a collapse into
REM/paralyzed sleep, at inopportune times
● Sleep apnea (“with no breath”): repeated awakening after breathing stops; time
in bed is not restorative sleep

Are these people dreaming?

● Night terrors refer to sudden scared-looking behavior, with rapid heartbeat and
breathing.
● Sleepwalking and sleeptalking run in families, so there is a possible genetic
basis.

Monkey Business Illusion

- count passes = notice gorilla? change in the curtain colour?
- problem with selective attention, focusing on one task causes filtering out of other info
- in-attentional blindness: failure to notice a fully visible object bc your attention is
engaged somewhere else
- another way to view selective attention: not processing what's considered distracting
info

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally

Injustice and inequality dominate the discourse, and rightfully so. We are in the midst of
a pandemic, on the brink of economic collapse, and looking toward a future ravaged by
climate change. The most vulnerable among us being the most afflicted. Angry?
Science says that's only natural.

A video went viral of an experiment involving two capuchin monkeys in neighboring

cages. You should watch the video, but here is a basic breakdown of the experiment.
Upon completion of a task both monkeys are given cucumber. The researcher, Frans de
Waal, says that if both monkeys are given cucumber, "they're perfectly willing to do this
25 times in a row."

But things change when one monkey is paid more than the other. After seeing his
neighbor get a grape for doing the same task, the monkey flat out rejects cucumber. He
hucks it back at the researcher and slaps the ground. This monkey wants grapes. In his
TEDtalk, de Waal comments, "So this is basically the Wall Street protest that you see
here."

The conclusion of the experiment is that even animals understand injustice. This was
met with strong criticism from philosophers. De Waal says, "One philosopher even wrote
us that it was impossible that monkeys had a sense of fairness because fairness was
invented during the French Revolution." Appropriately, the TED audience laughs at this
idea.

Problems in the modern world are intersectional and complex. Solutions to these
problems are hard. It takes building coalitions through solidarity and aiming those at
reform. But that's not always our first response to crisis. Why instead do we rant to our
family members and "go off" on social media? Because, just like the capuchins, we have
a visceral and emotional reaction to unfairness.

Our emotional response to injustice is not a weakness though. De Waal's mention of the
Occupy Wall Street movement is a perfect example of this. Emotional reactions give us
the drive to do things like camp out in a park for months on end. Activism without
emotion is like a plane without wings (no that wouldn't be a rocket; they work
differently).

Probably the most encouraging thing de Waal describes in his TEDtalk is when his
colleague, Sarah Brosnan, ran the experiment with chimpanzees. Apparently, it's
common for the chimp who is given the grape to refuse the unfair treatment until the
other chimp is also given a grape. You heard that right. Chimps reject privilege. Booya.

De Waal concludes his talk by saying that the monkeys' rejection of unfairness shows
that morality doesn't come from a learned belief system. Our desire for fairness is not
some post-enlightenment concept dreamt up by stinky French philosophers. And we
didn't need Adam and Eve eating that fruit to get it. It's natural and ancient. It's like
smiling when someone smiles or catching a yawn. When you see injustice, you'll feel it.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg