SSC103 Introduction to Psychology
Lecture 9: Consciousness
Dr. Stephanie Szeto
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Sensation and Perception
* Sensation (感官)
* Perception (感知)
* Interpretation of what your senses tell you
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Consciousness
• Consciousness is a person’s subjective awareness
of mind
• People’s current awareness of external and
internal stimuli
Conscious involves:
• Monitoring:
• Monitoring ourselves and our environment so that perception, memories,
and thoughts are represented in awareness
• Focus on some stimuli and ignore other
• Controlling:
• Controlling ourselves and our environment so that we are able to initiate
and terminate behavioral and cognitive activates
• To plan, initiate, and guide our actions 3
Sigmund Freud and his psychodynamic
• Sigmund Freud postulated theories
through self-analysis
• Freudian slips = a slip of the tongue
that is motivated by and reveals
some unconscious aspect of the
mind.
Souvenir from Freud Museum
Humour in Freud’s Oedipus Complex 4
Levels of consciousness
• Conscious: we have awareness
• Preconscious: memories can be
brought to consciousness
• Unconscious: unaware, can’t recall,
but influence feelings, judgement,
and behaviour
• Iceberg:
– Conscious: above the water, we can see
– Preconscious: the tide rises and falls
– Unconscious: under the water, we can’t
see
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Sleep
Class Discussion
Last week,
1. In average, how many hours did you sleep each night?
2. How often did you fall into sleep in class?
3. Did you try to pay for the sleep debt during the weekend?
If so, how many hours?
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Sleep
A Scientific Study of Sleep
• Use electroencephalogram (EEG) (腦波圖) to record the
electrical activity in the brain during sleep
• Scientists have found that the brain is active throughout the night,
and that sleep proceeds through a series of 5 stages identified by
unique patterns of brain waves
Amplifiers produce graphical
records of various patterns
Pattern of
brain waves
Eye movement
Ear - Completes
the circuit through
amplifiers
Chin - activities of
7
muscles
Sleep
Beta wave
– 14-30Hz
– Alert, concentration, thinking
Alpha waves
– 7.5-12.5
– Relax, meditation
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Stage 1
Sleep: Stage 1
• Theta waves
– 4 - 8 Hz
– A transition from wakefulness to the deeper stages of sleep
– Characterized by relatively rapid, low-amplitude (振幅) brain
waves
– Drowsy
– People may not aware they have fallen asleep.
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Stage 2
Sleep: Stage 2
• A deeper sleep than that of stage 1
• Characterized by slower, more regular pattern of brain
waves, along with the presence of sleep spindles (紡錘)
and K-complex (K複雜波)*
an occasional sharp rise & fall
in the amplitude of the whole
EEG; occur every 1.0–1.7 min.
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Stage 3
• Delta wave, making up 20-50% of the record
• 1 - 3.9Hz, slow brain wave
• Characterized by the presence of delta (δ) waves
• with greater peaks and valleys in the wave pattern
Stage 4 – the deepest stage of sleep
• Delta wave, ≥ 50%
• Brain waves take even slower and more regular
• People are least responsive to outside stimulation 11
While you’re sleeping, do notice the following disturbance?
Storm/ heavy rain
Telephone Ring
Fighting next-door
In Stages 3 & 4, we may be aroused by something personal, such
as a child crying but may ignore impersonal disturbance.
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Stage 5 - REM sleep
• Most people dream during this stage
• Characterized by low-voltage, high-frequency waves;
increased heart rate, blood pressure & breathing rate;
erections (in males); REMs occur in bursts lasting 10-20
seconds
• REM sleep occupies a little over 20% of adults’ and 50% of
infants’ total sleeping time.
• Longer REM period: longer and more elaborate dream
• People sometime dream during NREM stages
– Fewer visual images and emotion; reflect real life
REM sleep
[Link] 13
Sleep through the night
Around 90 minutes, cycle through
several stages during the night
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Sleep through the night
Stage 3 then recurs (復發)
briefly, immediately followed
by the first REM period of the
night.
A person goes from
wakefulness into a deep
sleep (Stage 4) during the
first hour (~70 minutes) of
sleep 15
Sleep through the night
Around 4-5 distinct REM periods
over an 8-hours sleep
Deep sleep (Stages 3 & 4) occur most at the first part of the night whereas most
REM sleep occurs in the last part.
Our brain also operates in deep sleep, e.g., we seldom fall out of bed. 16
Dream
What is Dream?
• Dreaming is an altered state of consciousness in which
picture stories are constructed based on memories and
current concerns, or on fantasies and images.
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Dream
• To recall a dream,
• Unless a distraction-free waking period occurs shortly
after dreaming, the memory of the dream is not
consolidated.
80% - report
having a dream
during REM
sleep
50% - report
having a dream
during NREM
sleep
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Dream
• To recall a dream,
• It depends on one’s motivation and interest in dreams.
• With a REM study, incidents in dreams commonly last
about as long as they would in real life.
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Activity - Your dream
Recall a dream,
• Its content (the most impressive piece of episode)
• Your feeling (in the dream and/or after you woke up)
• How was it related to your daily experiences?
• Any new discovery/insights about yourself and your life?
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Interpretation of Dream
Sigmund Freud’s Wish Fulfillment Theory (潛意識的願望滿足理
論)
• Basic Explanation – Dreams represent unconscious wishes the
dreamer wants to fulfill.
• Meaning of Dreams – Latent (潛在的) content reveals unconscious
wishes and ideas, which an individual finds unacceptable and have
been repressed to the unconscious; the latent content is disguised
by and transformed into manifest (顯然的) content of dreams, i.e., the
characteristics and events that make up the actual narrative of the
dream.
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Interpretation of Dream
• Every dream is meaningful and functional
• Dreams disclose unconscious mind and function as
fulfilment of repressed wishes
• No dream dictionary. All dream elements are symbolic
which have meanings that can be discovered through the
dreamer’s associations
Say whatever comes to mind in relation to each
element of the dream
[Link]
interpretation-of-dreams/freuds-method-for-
interpreting-dreams/
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Interpretation of Dream
To analyze a dream, you may think of the following:
• What is the most distinctive thing about it?
• Did it relate to the reality?
• What/who the characters of the dream can be inferred to?
• If there’s an answer for the dream, what would be the answer?
• If the dream reminds you of something, what is it?
• Any actions would you decide to take on or respond to the dream?
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How much sleep is necessary?
Age Average sleep time
Newborns 15 hrs
Age 2 13 hrs
Age 3 12 hrs
Children 10 hrs
Teenagers 9 hrs
Adults 8 hrs
(range from 6.5-9 hours)
Source: Centers for Disease Control, US
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Sleep Theory
Edgar & Dement’s (1992): opponent-process model of
sleep and wakefulness (睡眠與清醒相對歷程模式理論)
– Our brain possesses 2 opponent processes that govern the
tendency to fall asleep or remain awake.
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Sleep Theory
(i) Homeostatic sleep drive (恆定睡眠驅力)
• A physiological process that strives to obtain the amount
of sleep required for a stable level of daytime alertness. It
is active throughout the night but also operates during
the daytime.
(ii) Clock-dependent alerting process (以時鐘為基礎的警覺歷程)
• A process in the brain that arouses us at a particular time
each day – our biological clock
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Sleep Disorders
Sleepwalking
- Usually in children (~age 6-12)
- Usually happens in the first 4 hours of sleep
- During the transition from deeper sleep to shallow sleep, they want to get up (but
partially)
- Calm sleepwalking vs. agitated sleepwalking
- Used to forget about it when they wake up
[Link] 27
Sleep Disorders
(i) Insomnia (失眠)
• A sleep disorder characterized by
– difficulty sleeping
– dissatisfaction with the amount or quality of one’s
sleep
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Sleep Disorders
(ii) Narcolepsy (突發性睡眠症)
• Characterized by recurring, irresistible attacks of
drowsiness; one may fall asleep at any time
• Frequency and duration: several times a day (severe
cases), lasting from a few seconds to 30 minutes
• Narcolepsy is the intrusion of REM episodes into daytime
hours. During attacks, victims go quickly into a REM state
rapidly that they may lose muscle control and collapse
before they can lie down.
• Have genetic explanation
[Link] 29
Sleep Disorders
(iii) Apnea (窒息性失眠)
• Sleepers stop breathing while asleep, leading to the secretion
of emergency hormones and this reaction causes sleepers to
awaken in order to being breathing.
• Stop breathing because:
• The brain fails to send a ‘breathe’ signal to the diaphragm and
other breathing muscles
• The airway collapses because of the relaxed muscles of the
throat
• Frequency of apnea episodes: a few to several hundred each
night (severe cases)
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Effects of sleep loss
The loss of as little as an hour of sleep increase the
likelihood of fatigue, inattentiveness, mistakes,
immune suppression, illness, accidents, lowing our
performance, etc. (Wolfson & Armitage, 2008).
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Sleep Deprivation (睡眠剝奪)
• A common sign of sleep deprivation is inability to
stay alert through the day.
• If allowed, sleep for 7-8 hours a day. If we sleep for
less than 3 hours, we accumulate sleep debt not
paid off by one 10-hours sleep.
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Sleep Deprivation (睡眠剝奪)
• Sleep deprivation affects cognitive abilities
• People report having perceptual distortion,
hallucination, trouble concentrating on mental tasks
• Experiment on laboratory animals
– Rats which are kept from sleep look sick and stop grooming
their fur
– Become weak and uncoordinated and lose their ability to
regulate body temperature
– Even eating much more food than normal, their metabolic
rates become so high that they continue to lose weight
– Die eventually
– Rats in control group live like normal
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Deliberate Altered States of Consciousness
Drug Hypnosis (催眠) Meditation (冥想)
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Depressants (抑制劑)
e.g., tranquilizers
(鎮靜劑), alcohol
Opiates
Cannabis
(鴉片類藥物)
(大麻類藥物) Types of
e.g., heroin,
e.g., marijuana
Drugs morphine
Hallucinogens Stimulants
(幻覺劑) (興奮劑)
e.g. LSD e.g., cocaine, caffeine
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Drug
Drug Use
• Psychoactive drugs (精神藥物)
– Drugs that affect behavior, consciousness, and/or mood.
• Addictive drugs (成癮藥物)
– It produces a biological or psychological dependence in the user,
and withdrawal from them leads to a craving for the drug.
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Drug
• Drug dependence (藥物倚賴) has 3 key characteristics:
a) Tolerance (耐藥性)
– With continued use, the person must take more and more of
the drug to achieve the same effect.
b) Withdrawal (戒斷)
– With discontinued use, the person experiences unpleasant
physical and psychological reactions.
c) Compulsive use (強迫使用)
– The person takes more of the drug than intended, tries to
control his/her drug use but fails, and spends a great deal of
time trying to obtain the drug.
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Hypnosis (催眠)
• Shift our conscious mind to a trance state, or
concentrate on something
• Hypnosis produces a state of heightened of susceptibility
(敏感度) to the hypnotist’s suggestions
• Under hypnosis, significant behavioral changes occur,
including increased concentration, heightened ability to
recall and construct images, and acceptance of
suggestions that clearly contradict reality
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Hypnotherapy (催眠治療)
• Hypnotherapy (Feldman 2009:154):
– could be used for controlling pain, reducing smoking, relieving
symptoms of psychological disorders, and improving athletic
performance, etc.
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Meditation (冥想)
Definition
Meditation is a learned technique for refocusing
attention that brings about an altered state of
consciousness (Feldman 2009:155)
– By performing certain rituals and exercises to achieve
a pleasant, mildly altered subjective state in which
one feels relaxed.
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Meditation (冥想)
Effects of Meditation:
• Feeling: feel relaxed, mentally and physically
• Arousal: may reduce arousal, especially for easily
stressed individuals or people suffering from anxiety and
tension
• Inner peace: an experience of the “pure and empowered”
mind
• Thinking: people can gain new insights into themselves
and problems they are facing
• Health: a long-term practice of meditation may improve
health because of the biological changes it produces
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Mindfulness
• In psychology, mindfulness is used
• Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present,
aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not
overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on
around us.
What is Mindfulness?
[Link]
How to Practice Mindfulness?
[Link]
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