VODULE Basic Con scio usne ss Con cept s

Every science has concepts so fundamental they are nearly impossible to define. THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
Biologists agree on what is alive but not on precisely what life is. In physics, matter and
energy elude simple definition. oT psychologists, consciousness is similarly a fundamental
yet slippery concept.

Defining Consciousness
LEARNING OBJECTIVE QUESTION (LOQ 8-1 What is the place of consciousness
ni psychology's history?
At its beginning, psychology was "the description and explanation of states of conscious-
ness" (Ladd, 1887). But during the first half of the twentieth century, the difficulty of
scientifically studying consciousness led many psychologists —including those in the
emerging school of behaviorism (Learning modules) - ot turn to direct observations of
behavior. By 1960, psychology had nearly lost consciousness, defining itself as "the
science of behavior." Like a car's speedometer, consciousness "just reflects what's
happening" (Seligman, 1991, p. 24).
But in the 1960s, mental concepts reemerged. Neuroscience advances linked brain
activity ot sleeping, dreaming, and other mental states. Researchers began studying con-
sciousness altered by drugs, hypnosis, and meditation. (More on meditation in the Emo-
tions, Stress, and Health modules.) Psychologists of all persuasions were affirming the
importance of cognition, or mental processes. Psychology was regaining consciousness.
Today, consciousness is a thriving area of study (Michel et al., 2019). By consciousness,
most psychologists mean our subjective awareness of ourselves and our environment
(Feinberg & Mallatt, 2016).
• Conscious awareness helps us make sense of our life, including our sensations,
emotions, and choices (Weisman et al., 2017). It allows us to set and achieve goals as
we reflect on our past, adapt to our present, and plan for our future. Most conscious
thoughts focus on the present and the future (Baumeister et al., 2020).
• When learning a behavior, conscious awareness focuses our attention (Logan et al,.
2018). Over time, our mind tends to run on autopilot (Logan, 2018; Rand et al., 2017).
When learning to drive, we focus on the car and the traffic. With practice, driving
becomes semiautomatic. We may find our mind wandering on a long stretch of
highway-only to have our attention jolted back to the car and the traffic when
someone cuts in front of us and we need to react.
consciousness o u r subiective awareness
• Over time, we flit between different states of consciousness, including typical waking of ourselves and our environment.
awareness and various altered states (FIGURE 8.1).
hypnosis a social interaction in which one
person (the hypnotist) suggests to another
Hypnosis (the subject) that certain perceptions,
Through hypnosis, we may experience an altered state of consciousness involving feelings, thoughts, or behaviors wil
changes in perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors. Researchers and health care spontaneously occur.
 CHAPTER 3 CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE TWO-TRACK MIND (MODULES 8-10)

→ FIGURE 8.1
Some states occur Daydreaming and
Altered states of Flow Dreaming
spontaneousty drowsiness
consciousness In
addition to normal,
waking awareness, Some are physio-
Hallucinations Orgasm Food or oxygen
consciousness comes logically induced starvation
to us in altered states,
including daydreaming,
Some are psycho- Sensory
sleeping, drug-induced logically induced deprivation Hypnosis Meditation
hallucinating, and
meditating.
INSADCO Photography/Alamy Stock Photo

providers have for many years used hypnosis to lessen pain related to medical proce-
dures, headaches, burn injuries, heart disease, and dental issues (Milling et al,. 2002;
Montgomery et al., 2000; Patterson & Jensen, 2003). Hypnosis can also reduce emotional
distress, unpleasant thinking, and the pain of social rejection (Rainville et al., 1997; Raz
et al., 2005; Schnur et al., 2008). For people who are obese, hypnosis can aid weight loss,
especially when used with psychotherapy (Milling et al., 2018). (More on hypnosis in the
Sensation and Perception modules.)

Patient Cognitive Neuroscience

How does the brain make the mind? Researchers call this the "hard
problem": How do brain cells jabbering to one another create our aware-
ness of the taste of toast, the idea of infinity, the feeling of fright? The
question of how consciousness arises from the material brain is one of
life's deepest mysteries. Even with all the world's technology, we still don't
have a clue how to make a conscious robot. Such questions are at the heart
of cognitive neuroscience —the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity
Healthy Volunteers
linked with our mental processes.
fI you just think about kicking a soccer ball, an fMRI scan could detect
increased blood flow to the brain region that plans such action. In one
study, researchers asked skilled soccer players to imagine they were
making either creative moves (complex bicycle kicks) or ordinary moves
(simply kicking the ball from foot to foot). Scans showed that thinking of
creative moves produced the most coordinated brain activity across differ-
ent brain regions (Fink et al., 2019).
Tennis Imagery Spatial Navigation Imagery If brain activity can reveal conscious thinking, could brain scans allow
us to discern mental activity ni unresponsive patients? Yes. A stunning
1 FIGURE 8.2 demonstration of consciousness appeared ni brain scans of a noncommu-
Evidence of awareness When nicative patient— a 23-year-old woman who had been in a car accident and showed no
a noncommunicative patient was asked outward signs of conscious awareness (Owen, 2017a; Owen et al., 2006). When research-
to imagine playing tennis or walking, her ers asked her to imagine playing tennis, MRI scans revealed activity in a brain area that
brain (top) exhibited activity similar ot controls arm and leg movements (FIGURE 8.2). Even ni a motionless, noncommunicative
a healthy person's brain (bottom). Such fMRI body, researchers concluded, the brain —and the mind —may still be active. Follow-up
scans enable a "conversation" with some studies of brain activity ni dozens of unresponsive patients suggest that 15 to 30 percent
unresponsive patients, by instructing them, may be experiencing meaningful conscious awareness (Claassen et al., 2019; Owen,
for example, to answer yes to a question by 2017b).
imagining playing tennis (top and bottom Many cognitive neuroscientists are exploring and mapping the conscious functions
left, and no by imagining walking (top and of the cortex. Based on your cortical activation patterns, they can now, in limited ways,
bottom right). read your mind (Bor, 2010). They could, for example, tell which of 01 similar objects
(hammer, drill, and so forth) you were viewing (Shinkareva et al,. 2008).
Conscious experience arises from synchronized activity across the brain (Mashour,
→ cognitive neuroscience the interdisciplin- 2018; Vaz et al., 2019). fI a stimulus activates enough cortex-wide coordinated neu-
ary study of the brain activity linked with ral activity— as strong signals in one brain area trigger activity elsewhere-it crosses
cognition (thinking, knowing, remembering, athreshold for consciousness. A weaker stimulus— perhaps a word flashed too briefly
and communicating). to be consciously perceived —may trigger only visual cortex activity that quickly fades.
 MODULE8 BASIC CONSCIOUSNESS CONCEPTS 9(1
A stronger visual stimulus will engage other brain areas, such as those involved with
language, attention, and memory. Such reverberating activity detected by brain scans is
a telltale sign of conscious awareness (Boly et al., 2011; Silverstein et al., 2015). Coordi-
nated activity across brain areas can therefore provide another indication of awareness
in unresponsive patients (Demertzi et al., 2019). How the synchronized activity produces
awareness remains a mystery. One theory proposes that consciousness occurs when
incoming information activates the cerebral "workspace," a super network that distrib-
utes information to and from other brain networks (Baars, 2002; Dehaene &Changeux,
2011). Still, one wonders: How does matter make mind?

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE
RP-1 Those working ni the interdisciplinary field called
study the brain activity associated with the mental processes
of thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
ANSWERS IN APPENDIX E

Selective Attention
LOQ 8-2 How does selective attention direct our perceptions?
Through selective attention, our awareness focuses, like a flashlight beam, on a minute
aspect of all that we experience. We may think we can fully attend to a conversation or
a class lecture while checking and returning text messages. Actually, our consciousness
focuses on but one thing at a time.
By one estimate, our five senses take in 11,000,000 bits of information per second, of
which we consciously process about 40 (Wilson, 2002). Yet our mind's unconscious track
intuitively makes great use of the other 10,999,960 bits.
What captures our limited attention? Things we deem important. Aclassic exam-
ple of selective attention si the cocktail party effect - your ability ot attend to only one
voice within a sea of many as you chat with a party guest. But what happens when
another voice speaks your name? Your cognitive radar, operating on your mind's other
track, instantly brings that unattended voice into consciousness. Even cats selectively
respond to their own names (Saito et al., 2019). This effect might have prevented an
embarrassing and dangerous situation ni 2009, when two Northwest Airlines pilots "lost
track of time." Focused on their laptops and ni conversation, they ignored alarmed air
traffic controllers' attempts to reach them and overflew their Minneapolis destination
by 150 miles. If only the controllers had known and spoken the pilots' names.
Selective A t t e n t i o n a n d Accidents
Have you, like 60 percent of U.S. drivers, read or sent a text message or used your
phone's GPS while driving ni the last month (Gliklich et al., 2016)? If so, you may have
thought —wrongly —that you could simultaneously attend to the road. Such digital
distraction can have tragic consequences, as our selective attention shifts more than
we realize (Stavrinos et al,. 2017). One study left people in a room for 28 minutes with
both internet and television access. On average, they guessed their attention switched
15 times. But they were not even close. Eye-tracking revealed eight times that many
attentional switches —120 on average (Brasel &Gips, 2011).
Rapid toggling between activities is today's great enemy of sustained, focused "Are you O.K.? You're barely paying attention
attention. The more we mindlessly check our phone, the more we're distracted from to your book, phone, show, laptop, and the
our everyday tasks (Marty-Dugas et al., 2018). When we switch attentional gears, and crossword you started ten minutes ago."
especially when we shift to and from complex tasks such as noticing and avoiding cars
around us, we pay atoll —a slight and sometimes fatal delay in coping (Rubenstein
et al., 2001). When a driver attends to a conversation, activity in brain areas vital to driv-
ing decreases an average of 73 percent (Just et al., 2008).
Just how dangerous si distracted driving? Each day, distracted driving kills about
9 Americans (CDC, 2018). One video cam study of teen drivers found that driver distraction selective attention focusing conscious
from passengers or phones occurred right before 58 percent of their crashes (AAA, 2015). awareness on a particular stimulus.
 CHAPTER 3 CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE TWO-TRACK MIND (MODULES 8-10)

Talking with passengers makes the risk of an accident 16. times higher than normal. Using
a phone (even hands-free) makes the risk 4 times higher than normal-equal to the risk of
THIS LANE FOR drunk driving (McEvoy et al., 2005, 2007). And while talking si distracting, texting wins the
CALLING A
ND TEXTN
IG danger game. One 18-month video cam study tracked the driving habits of long-haul truckers.
WHILE DRIVING When they were texting, their risk of a collision increased 32 times (Olson et al., 2009)!
YV
D ONL
Inattentional Blindness
At the level of conscious awareness, we are "blind" to all but a tiny sliver of visual stimuli.
Ulric Neisser (1979) and Robert Becklen and Daniel Cervone (1983) demonstrated this
inattentional blindness dramatically by showing people a 1-minute video of basketball
players, three in black shirts and three in white shirts, tossing a ball. Researchers told
viewers to press a key every time they saw a black-shirted player pass the ball. Most were
so intent on their task that they failed ot notice a young woman carrying an umbrella
saunter across the screen midway through the video (FIGURE 8.3). Watching a replay, view-
ers were astonished to see her (Mack & Rock, 2000). This inattentional blindness is a by-
product of what we are really good at: focusing attention on some part of our environment.
In a repeat of the experiment, smart-aleck researchers sent a gorilla-suited assistant
through the swirl of players (Simons &Chabris, 1999). During its -5 to 9-second cameo
appearance, the gorilla paused and thumped its chest. But the gorilla did not steal the
show: Half the conscientious pass-counting viewers
failed to see it. Inattentional blindness struck again in
a study of 50 radiologists who were asked to search for
cancer in lung scans. Two out of three radiologists missed
alarge breast mass, indicating cancer (Williams et al.,
2021). They did, however, spot the much tinier groups of
lung cancer cells, which were the focus of their attention
This phenomenon extends to inattentional numbness
Pickpockets have long understood that bumping into
people makes them unlikely ot notice a hand slipping
into their pocket. British researchers experimented with
this tactile inattention: Sure enough, when distracted,
participants failed to perceive an otherwise easily
noticed vibration to their hand (Murphy &Dalton, 2016,
2018). Inattentional numbness can lead us to ignore
information right beneath our noses. When people
focused on adistracting task, they failed to notice a cof-
①FIGURE 8. 3 fee scent in the room (Forster & Spence, 2018). Our atten-
Inattentional blindness Viewers who tion is a wonderful gift, given to one thing at a time.
attended to basketball tosses among the Knowing that most people miss someone in a gorilla suit while their attention is riveted
black-shirted players usually failed to spot elsewhere, imagine the fun that magicians can have by manipulating our selective atten-
hte umbrella-toting woman sauntering tion. "Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging ni experimental psychology,"
across the screen (Neisser, 1979). says magician Teller (2009), a master of mind-messing methods. Clever thieves know this,
too. One Swedish psychologist was surprised ni Stockholm by a woman suddenly expos-
ing herself; only later did he realize that he had been pickpocketed, outwitted by thieves
who understood the limits of our selective attention (Gallace, 2012).
In other experiments, people exhibited a form of inattentional blindness called
change blindness. Viewers failed to notice that, after a brief visual interruption, a big
Coke bottle had disappeared, a railing had risen, clothing had changed color, and some-
one they'd been talking ot had been replaced by a different person (FIGURE 8.4) (Chabris &
Simons, 2010; Resnick et al., 1997). Out of sight, out of mind.

inattentional blindness failing to see A S K YOURSELF

visible objects when our attention is directed
elsewhere. Can you recall a recent time when, as your attention focused on one thing, you were oblivious to
something else —perhaps ot pain, to someone's approach, or to music lyrics? (If you're reading
change blindness failing to notice changes this while listening to exciting music, you may have struggled to understand the q u e s t i o n
in the environment; a form of inattentional
[Vasilev et al., 2018]).
blindness.
 MODULE 8 BASIC CONSCIOUSNESS CONCEPTS 93

@ FIGURE 8.4
Change blindness While
a man (in red) provides
directions ot another (a),
two experimenters rudely
pass between them carrying
a door (b). During this
interruption, het original
direction seeker switches
places whti another person
wearing different-colored
(b) (c) clothing c.() Most people
focused on their direction
giving, do not notice the
RETRIEVAL PRACTICE switch (Simons & Levin, 1998).
RP-2 Explain two attentional principles that magicians may use to fool us.
ANSWERS IN APPENDIXE

Dual Processing: The Two-Track Mind

L o o 8-3 What si the dual processing being revealed by today's cognitive
neuroscience?

Discovering which brain regions become active with a particular conscious experience
strikes many people as interesting, but not mind-blowing. fI everything psychological si
simultaneously biological, then our ideas, emotions, and spirituality must all, somehow,
be embodied. What si mind-blowing ot many of us is evidence that we have, so to speak,
two minds, each supported by its own neural equipment.
At any moment, we are aware of little more than what's on the screen of our
consciousness. But beneath the surface, unconscious information processing occurs
simultaneously on many parallel tracks. When we look at a bird flying, we are con-
sciously aware of the result of our cognitive processing (It's a hummingbird!) but not of
our subprocessing of the bird's color, form, movement, and distance. One of the grand
ideas of today's cognitive neuroscience is that much of our brain work occurs off stage,
out of sight. Thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating all operate on two
independent levels —a conscious, deliberate "high road," and an unconscious, automatic
"low road." The high road is reflective, the low road intuitive —together making what
researchers call dual processing (Kahneman, 2011; Pennycook et al., 2018). W e know
more than we know we know.
fI you are a driver, consider how you move into the right lane. Drivers know this
unconsciously but cannot accurately explain it (Eagleman, 2011). Most say they
would bank to the right, then straighten out —a procedure that would actually steer
them off the road. In reality, an experienced driver, after moving right, automatically
reverses the steering wheel just as far to the left of center, only then returning to
center. The lesson: The human brain is a device for converting conscious into uncon-
scious knowledge.
Or consider this story, which illustrates how science can be stranger than science
fiction. During my sojourns at Scotland's University of St Andrews, I [DM] came to
know cognitive neuroscientists David Milner and Melvyn Goodale (2008). They stud-
ied a local woman, D. F., who experienced brain damage when overcome by carbon
monoxide, leaving her unable to recognize and discriminate objects visually. Con-
sciously, D
. .F could see nothing. Yet she exhibited blindsight —hse acted as though dual processing the principle that
she could see. Asked to slip a postcard into a vertical or horizontal mail slot, she information is often simultaneously
could do so without error. Asked the width of a block in front of her, she was at a loss, processed on separate conscious and
but she could grasp it with just the proper finger-thumb distance. Likewise, fi our unconscious tracks.
right and left eyes view different scenes, we will only be consciously aware of one blindsight a condition ni which a person
at a time. Yet we will display some blindsight awareness of the other (Baker &Cass, can respond to a visual stimulus without
2013). consciously experiencing it.
 94 CHAPTER 3 CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE TWO-TRACK MIND (MODULES 8-10)

How could this be? Don't we have one visual system? Goodale and Milner knew
from animal research that the eye sends information simultaneously to different brain
areas, which support different tasks (Weiskrantz, 2009, 2010). Sure enough, a scan of
D. E's brain activity revealed normal activity ni the area concerned with reaching for,
grasping, and navigating objects, but damage in the area concerned with consciously
recognizing objects.' (See another example ni FIGURE 8.5.)
How strangely intricate is this thing we call vision, conclude Goodale and Milner in
their aptly titled book, Sight Unseen (2004). We may think of our vision as a single system
that controls our visually guided actions. Actually, it is a dual-processing system (Foley
et al,. 2015). Avisual perception track enables us "ot think about the world"- - to recognize
things and to plan future actions. Avisual action track guides our moment-to-moment
movements.
The dual-track mind also appeared in a patient who lost all of his left visual cortex,
leaving him blind to objects and faces presented on the right side of his field of vision
He nevertheless could sense the emotion expressed ni faces that he did not consciously
perceive (de Gelder, 2010). The same is true of normally sighted people whose visual cor-
tex has been disabled with magnetic stimulation. Such findings suggest that brain areas
below the cortex process emotion-related information.
Much of our everyday thinking, feeling, and acting operates outside our conscious
awareness (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). Some "80 to 90 percent of what we do is uncon-
⼩ F I GURE 8 .5 scious," says Nobel laureate and memory expert Eric Kandel (2008). Sometimes our
When the blind can "see" In this unconscious biases I( prefer to hire a female nanny) do not match our conscious beliefs
compelling demonstration of blindsight and (I am not biased) (Greenwald & Lai, 2020). Other times, we're motivated to avoid think-
the two-track mind, researcher Lawrence
Weiskrantz trailed a blindsight patient
ing, especially when careful thought (How many calories are ni that dessert?) conflicts with
down a cluttered hallway. Although told the
temptations I( want that piece of cake!) (Woolley &Risen, 2018). Yet most people, most of
the time, mistakenly believe that their intentions and deliberate choices rule their lives.
hallway was empty, the patient meandered
They don't.
around all the obstacles without any
awareness of them. Although consciousness enables us to exert voluntary control and to communicate
our mental states to others, it si but the tip of the information-processing iceberg. Just
ask the volunteers who chose a card after watching a magician shuffle through the deck
(Olson et al., 2015). In nearly every case, the magician swayed participants' decisions by
subtly allowing one card to show for longer —but 91 percent of the participants believed
they had made the choice on their own. Being intensely focused on an activity (such as
reading about consciousness, we hope) increases your total brain activity no more than
5 percent above its baseline rate. Even when you rest, activity whirls inside your head
(Raichle, 2010).
This unconscious parallel processing is faster than conscious sequential process-
ing, but both are essential. Parallel processing enables your mind to take care of rou-
tine business (more on this in the Sensation and Perception modules). Sequential
processing is best for solving new problems, which requires our focused attention
on one thing at a time. Try this fi you are able: fI you are right-handed, move your
right foot ni a smooth counterclockwise circle and write the number 3repeatedly
with your right hand —at the same time. Or try something equally difficult: Tap a
steady beat three times with your left hand while tapping four times with your right
hand. Both tasks require conscious attention, which can be in only one place at a
time. If time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once, then
consciousness is nature's way of keeping us from thinking and doing everything at
once.

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE
*parallel processing processing RP-3 What are the mind's two tracks, and what is dual processing?
multiple aspects of a stimulus or problem
simultaneously. ANSWERS IN APPENDIX E
sequential processing processing one
aspect of a stimulus or problem at a time;
generally used to process new information or
to solve difficult problems. S
' o, would the reverse damage lead ot the opposite symptoms? Indeed, there are a few such patients —who can see and
recognize objects but have a i i c u l t y pointing t o w a r a o r grasping t h e m
 8 REVIEW Module 8: Basic Consciousness Concepts
LEARNING OBJECTIVES MODULE TEST
Test Yourself Answer these repeated Learning Objective Questions on Test Yourself Answer the following questions on your own first, then
your own (before "showing" the answers here, or checking the answers ni "show" the answers here, or check your answers ni Appendix .E
Appendix D) ot improve your retention of the concepts (McDaniel et a,.l
2009, 2015). 1. Failure to see visible objects because our attention is
occupied elsewhere is called

LOQ 8-1 What si the place of consciousness ni psychology's .2 We register and react ot stimuli outside of our awareness by
history? means of - processing. When we devote
deliberate attention to stimuli, we use
LOQ 8-2 How does selective attention direct our perceptions? processing.
LOQ 8-3 What is the dual processing being revealed by today's 3. Inattentional blindness is a product of our
cognitive neuroscience? attention.

TERMS AND CONCEPTS TO REMEMBER

Test Yourself Write down the definition ni your own words, then check
your answer.
consciousness, p. 89 change blindness, p. 92
hypnosis, p. 89 dual processing, p. 93
cognitive neuroscience, p. 90 blindsight, p. 93
selective attention, p. 91 parallel processing, p. 94
inattentional blindness, p. 92 sequential processing, p. 49