usness

onscio
C
& Awareness

Group-6,
Cognitive
Psychology
CONTENTS

1 Meaning

Thought suppression -
2 individual differences

3 Blindsight

Baar's Global Workspace theory

4 (1988)
 Introduction
Understanding
Consciousness as Conscious
Content: EXPERIENCE

Understanding
Consciousness as Levels of
Consciousness: STATES
Con
Level tent
Need for a Multidimensional Approach

The two aspects of consciousness are related – a non-zero conscious

level is required for individuals to experience conscious content or
awareness. The notion of levels implies that different states of
consciousness lie along a single dimension.

Eg: patients with disorders of consciousness were traditionally

categorised as having different levels of consciousness solely on the
basis of behavioural measures (e.g., wakefulness; capacity for
intentional behaviour). However, some patients exhibit consciousness
via their patterns of brain activity in spite of displaying no behavioural
evidence of consciousness.
Forms of Consciousness

Access consciousness can be reported and its contents are available

for use by other cognitive processes (e.g., attention; memory). It “refers
to the functions that can be associated with consciousness”

Phenomenal consciousness is our raw, private experience; it “refers to

the experiential characteristics of consciousness”

Immediate conscious experience (phenomenal consciousness) is much

richer than the information about that experience we can communicate
to others (access consciousness).

Skepticism with such distinction

Forms of Consciousness

Baumeister and Masicampo

(2010)
Phenomenal consciousness,
which “describes feelings,
sensations, and orienting to the
present moment."
Higher form of consciousness
(conscious thought). It “involves
the ability to reason, to reflect
on one’s experiences, and have
a sense of self”.
The "hard
problem" of
Consciousness
 Functions
of Consciousness perceiving the
social communication
controlling our
and understanding what
environment. actions.
others are thinking.

understanding neural
future planning. informative.
correlates.
 SOCIAL COMMUNICATION

A crucial function of consciousness is to facilitate social communication.

Graziano and Kastner :“The machinery that computes information about other
people’s awareness is the same machinery that computers information about
our own awareness”

out-of-body experiences, which are “sensations in which a

person’s consciousness seems to become detached from the
body and take up a remote viewing position”

the purpose of conscious thought is precisely for enabling

people to tell their thoughts to one another.”
CONTROLLING ACTIONS

Free will: “the ability to make choices and to determine one’s own
outcomes free from constraints”

Wegner (2003): "We have only the illusion of free will."

Behavioural evidence
sense of agency – the “feeling of being in the driving seat when it
comes to our actions”

Cognitive neuroscience research casts less doubt on human free will

than sometimes claimed.
NEURAL CORRELATES

This approach typically involves relating behavioural measures of

conscious awareness to associated patterns of brain activity.

Advantages
It is theoretically important to compare behavioural and
neuroimaging measures to identify their similarities and
differences.

Neuroimaging measures may assess consciousness more

directly than behavioural measures if uncontaminated by
additional processes such as attention and memory.
Major Problems

In studies on the neural correlates of consciousness, several brain

regions are typically activated, thus it is difficult to establish the neural
correlates.

Feedforward processing and recurrent processing

Evidence : Frässle et al. (2014) study on binocular rivalry

THOUGHT SUPPRESSION

It is a type of motivated forgetting in which an individual consciously

attempts to stop thinking about a particulat thought.. When one tries to
suppress thoughts under a high cognitive load, the frequency of those
thoughts increases and becomes more accessible than before.

Processes Involved

Monitoring : automatically searching for unwanted thoughts

Operating : conscious attempt to distract oneself
THOUGHT SUPPRESSION IN OCD

Thought suppression may lead to a

rebound effect in OCD patients, where
the effort to push a thought away
actually causes it to return.
BLINDSIGHT

Blindsight is a phenomenon in
which people who are
perceptually blind in a certain
area of their visual field
demonstrate some response to Can light enter into
visual stimuli. the eye?

Where is the problem?

Is it in the brain or eye?
 Brain injuries

ETIOLOGY

Damage to
Primary visual Brain Tumour
cortex
Types of Blindsight

1 Type 1

2 Type 2
BAAR’S GLOBAL WORKSPACE THEORY
(1988)

Initially emphasized behavioral data, whereas, later there was much

emphasis on identifying the main areas of the brain that were
associated with conscious awareness

Role of cortex and thalamus in conscious experience

COMMON ASSUMPTIONS

Early stimulus processing involves numerous special purpose

unconscious processors operating in parallel. These processors are
distributed across numerous brain areas, each carrying out a
specialized function
Eg: Colour or motion processing

Consciousness is associated with integrating information from these

special-purpose processors relatively late in processing.
Brain areas associated with consciousness vary as a function of the
content of conscious experience
Eg: Visual areas with awareness of visual but not auditory stimuli.

However, some brain areas are consistently activated during conscious

awareness.
Conscious awareness is typically determined by prior selective
attention.
Eg: Consider a sentence such as “I look in order to see”. The word look
refers to attention whereas the word see refers to consciousness.

In other words, attention resembles choosing a television channel and

consciousness resembles what is presented on the screen.
WEBB AND GRAZIANO

They identified five different hypotheses.

According to this hypothesis, there can be attention with

or without awareness.

In the latter case, attention is under less control.

Contributions
Meaning: Aastha and Thought Suppression:
Tejal Vandana and Tanaya

Baar's Global
Blindsight:
Workspace Theory:
Dinesh and Abhinav
Alisha and Ananya
REFERENCES
Eysenck, M. W., & Keane, M. T. (2015). Cognitive psychology: A
student handbook. Psychology press. (MAIN REFERENCE)

Wang, D., Hagger, M. S., & Chatzisarantis, N. L. (2020). Ironic effects

of thought suppression: a meta-analysis. Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 15(3), 778-793.

Blindsight: a strange neurological condition that could help explain

consciousness

PSYCH IN REAL LIFE: CONSCIOUSNESS AND BLINDSIGHT

Thank Have a
great d
a
ahead. y
(it's a
long on

you!
e.)