State of Consciousness

Consciousness
1. The level of awareness of our internal state and our external environment
Attention
1. Focused attention
  1. Concentrating on just 1 task
Oridinary Wakefullness
1. We are aware of our thoughts and the world around us, but our attention can easily shift into internal and external stimuli
Normal waking consciousness
1. Is a sate that is organised, clear and meaningful.
  1. Level of awareness
    1. Controlled processes
      1. Require conscious, alert awareness and mental effort in which the individual actviley focuses their attention on acheiving a particular goal
        Attention is prevented from being focused on other tasks
    2. Automatic processes
      1. Require little conscious awareness & mental effort. Allow us to do two things as once.
        Attention is a concentration of mental actvity that involves focusing on the specific stimuli, whilst ignoring the other stimuli
    3. Selective Attention
      1. A focus on 1 stimulus to the Exclusion of all others. Refers to the limitation placed on how much we can attend to at any given moment.
    4. Divided Attention
      1. Refers to our ability to perform two or more activities at the same time.
ASC
1. Any state of consciousness which is distinctly different in level of awareness & experience from NWC in terms of quality & intensity of sensations, feeling, thoughts etc
  1. Natural occurring ASC
    1. Sleep/Dreaming
  2. Purposefully induced ASC
    1. Meditation, hypnosis, taking some types of drugs
5 major Psychological characteristics of ASC
1. Perceptual distortions, cognition & memory distortions
  1. Difficulty maintaining attention
  2. Distorted cognitive functioning
  3. causes us to lose touch with reality
  4. Pain thresholdds
    1. May be increased, we can tolerate more paint as it has less impacy on us
2. Sensory thresholds or sensetivity
  1. Can lead to heightened or dulling senses
  2. Can make senses more receptive to eternal stimuli
3. Change in emotional feeling
  1. Emotions may be heightened
  2. Emotions may be numbed
4. Change in self control
  1. Self controlled is lowered when drunk/high, no slef control when asleep
  2. Difficulty co-ordinating & controlling movements
  3. Hyponpsos may help subjects gain greater control over addictions
5. Disturbed sense of time
  1. Distorted sense of time when drunk or high
  2. During ASC perceived at a different speed than during NWC
Measuring physiological responses that can indicate different stages of consciousness
1. Electrical activity of the brain
  1. Brainwaves in EEG recordings vary in frequency
    1. Beta
    2. Alpha
    3. Theta
    4. Delta
2. Heart rate
  1. Sleep/ unconscious decreases HR
  2. Some drugs which are stimulants increase HR
3. Body temp
  1. During sleep decreaes
4. Galvanic Skin Response
  1. Measures electrical conductivity of the skins surface
  2. Indicates change in resistance of the skin to electrical current as we sweat more, electrical conductivity increases
  3. High arousal leads to increaes in sweating hence higher electrical coductivity of the skins surface, hence high GSR hence lower resistance of the skins surface to electrical current

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State of Consciousness

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	Created by Anita McDonald about 8 years ago