Psychology2016

Consciousness 173

Questions for Further Discussion

1. Have you ever had one of these experiences? Can you now understand how that
   experience might have been one that you would remember?


2. Talk to friends or family about their similar experiences, looking for the simpler
   explanation.

Chapter Summary

What Is Consciousness?

4. 1 Define what it means to be conscious.

• Consciousness is a person’s awareness of everything that is
  going on at any given moment. Most waking hours are spent in
  waking consciousness.

4. 2 Differentiate between the different levels of
   consciousness.

• Altered states of consciousness are shifts in the quality or pat-
  tern of mental activity.


• Controlled processes are those tasks that require a higher degree
  of conscious attention, while automatic processes can be done at
  a far lower level of conscious awareness.

Sleep

4. 3 Describe the biological process of the sleep–wake cycle.

• Sleep is a circadian rhythm, lasting 24 hours, and is a product
  of the activity of the hypothalamus, the hormone melatonin, the
  neurotransmitter serotonin, and body temperature.

4. 4 Explain why we sleep.

• Adaptive theory states that sleep evolved as a way to conserve
  energy and keep animals safe from predators that hunt at night.


• Restorative theory states that sleep provides the body with an
  opportunity to restore chemicals that have been depleted during
  the day as well as the growth and repair of cell tissue.


• The average amount of sleep needed by most adults is about 7
  to 9 hours within each 24-hour period.

4. 5 Identify the different stages of sleep.

• N1 sleep is light sleep.


• N2 sleep is indicated by the presence of sleep spindles, bursts of
  activity on the EEG.


• N3 is highlighted by the first appearance of delta waves, the
  slowest and largest waves, and the body is at its lowest level of
  functioning.


• R sleep occurs four or five times a night, replacing N1 after a full
  cycle through N1–N3 and then ascending back to lighter stages
  of sleep. It is accompanied by paralysis of the voluntary muscles
  but rapid movement of the eyes.

4. 6 Differentiate among the various sleep disorders.

• Sleepwalking and sleeptalking occur in N3, during slow-wave
  sleep.


• Voluntary muscles are paralyzed during REM sleep.
  
  
  • Night terrors are attacks of extreme fear that the victim has
    while sound asleep.
  
  
  • Nightmares are bad or unpleasant dreams that occur during
    REM sleep.
  
  
  • REM behavior disorder is a rare condition in which sleep paral-
    ysis fails and the person moves violently while dreaming, often
    acting out the elements of the dream.
  
  
  • Insomnia is an inability to get to sleep, stay asleep, or get
    enough sleep.
  
  
  • Sleep apnea occurs when a person stops breathing for 10 sec-
    onds or more.
  
  
  • Narcolepsy is a genetic disorder in which the person suddenly
    and without warning collapses into REM sleep.
  
  
  
  

Dreams

4. 7 Compare and contrast two explanations of why
   people dream.

• Manifest content of a dream is the actual dream and its events. Latent
  content of a dream is the symbolic content, according to Freud.


• Without outside sensory information to explain the activation
  of the brain cells in the cortex by the pons area, the association
  areas of the cortex synthesize a story, or dream, to explain that
  activation in the activation-synthesis hypothesis.


• A revision of activation-synthesis theory, the activation-infor-
  mation-mode model (AIM), states that information experienced
  during waking hours can influence the synthesis of dreams.

4. 8 Identify commonalities and differences in the
   content of people’s dreams.

• Calvin Hall believed that dreams are just another type of cog-
  nitive process that occurred during sleep, called the cognitive
  theory of dreaming


• Common dream content includes normal activities that people
  do while awake along with more fanciful actions such as flying
  or being naked in public.

Hypnosis

4. 9 Explain how hypnosis affects consciousness.

• Hypnosis is a state of consciousness in which a person is espe-
  cially susceptible to suggestion.


• The hypnotist will tell the person to relax and feel tired, to focus
  on what is being said, to let go of inhibitions and accept sugges-
  tions, and to use vivid imagination.