Psyc 358: psychology of consciousness
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| PSYC 358: PSYCHOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
11/29/07- 1. Review Session Tues 2. Final Exam: 2pm on Tuesday, December 11. HERE!!!!!!! (CESL 102. REALLY!) Shamanism is predicated on the idea that all healing is self-healing. In shamanic practice, it's the healer who takes the medication, that undergoes the procedure. Healing is wholeness and balance. All the different parts of you are working. Your different organ systems are doing what they're supposed to (e.g., immune system). Shamans create wholeness and balances within themselves and then they find that the healing they create is contagious. Ho'oponopono-- Hawaiian shamanic practice in which the practitioner seeks to change reality by changing himself or herself. "I love you. I'm sorry." Love and forgiveness shift your own consciousness and therefore the reality your consciousness creates. In Western society, the mind-body problems has been resolved, at least in some minds, so that materialism wins out. The idea that the material world gives rise to conscious experience predominates, and what has been downplayed is the possibility that conscious experience gives rise to the material world. The shamanic premise is captured in Gandhi's words: BE THE CHANGE THAT YOU SEEK. What does the journey into other dimension accomplish? Besides changing the individual who undergoes the journey, the journey can result in: 1. New insights. 2. A "soul retrieval"-- part of the person's conscious experience has gotten disconnected from their physical body. 3. To act as a "psychopomp"-- Guiding someone else throught the transitions of birth and death. The first creators were shamans: The first artists, dancers, singers, musicians, drummers of the world were using these practices for shamanic purposes. Creativity: Departure Initiation Return
2. Drumming 3. Wherever you go, bring something back 11/27/07- 1. Term paper is due by the beginning of class on Thursday (11/29). Electronic versions can be turned in to Dusana: dusana@email.arizona.edu. 2. Next Tuesday is our review day. 3. The final exam is HERE at 2pm on Tuesday, December 11. Please note the time change. If you're more than 15 minutes late or absent, you get a zero. 4. Both answer keys are posted in the third-floor hallway of the Psyc building. 5. We have a very special eminent presenter for guest demo, followed by TCEs.
Chanting
Dancing Meditation Entheogens- A psychoactive plant substance used in a sacramental manner (ritual and ceremonies). The word means "generating inspiration" or "producing the expeirence of spirit."
Americas- peyote, psilocybin, and salvia divinorum Asia- drink called Soma (the contents remain unknown-- fly agaric, ephedra, ?)\ Europe- mead Oceania- kava
2. Paper due November 29 (Happy Term Paper Day!)
2. were three times less likely to develop pulmonary edema (fluid builds up in the lungs; in the coronary patients, it happens because the heart isn't strong enough to pump fluid through the system); 3. required no intubation (breathing assistance), whereas 12 control patients required it.
1. The people who prayed were all Christians. 2. No checks were made to insure that the people praying were actually praying. 3. No controls were used on the prayer strategy. There are lots of types of prayer: a. Petition- asking something for yourself b. Intercession-- asking something for someone else c. Confession-- asking forgiveness and repenting d. Lamentation- crying over your situation e. Adoration- giving honor and praise f. Invocation-- summoning the presence of a higher power g. Thanksgiving- gratitude There are other types of prayer that are silent, non-verbal; some involve the experience of surrender ("thy will be done"); meditation on a mantra (such as OM) can be considered a prayer. 4. No control over the skill level of the "prayer players."' 5. Prayer groups were not blind; they knew the name, diagnosis, and a brief description of the condition of the patients for whom they were praying. 6. Differences in the physicians of different patients. 7. Individual differences among patients. 8. No control for outside prayer (the patient and his/her family friends may be praying, as well). 9. Some variables were not affected: No difference in the number of days that patients stayed in the hospital, or in the amount of medication prescribed, or in mortality (7% for the prayed-for group and 8.5% for the control group).
1. Slow down the growth of microbes or cancer cells. 2. Protect blood in test tubes from undergoing hemolysis. 3. Keep plants alive in harsh conditions. 4. Heal animals.
Treatment- Therapeutic Touch practitioner doing healing work on the arm that lasted no more than five minutes Control condition- Nothing
None of the control patients had that. 11/15/07- Announcements: 1. Guest Presenter Today- Jeanne Burrows-Johnson 2. The term paper can and should be double-spaced.
The effectiveness of placebo in treating warts is 48%, compared to 52% for standard drug treatments. Weil claims that there is a natural healing system. Factors that affect the size of the placebo effect: 1. Provider characteristics a. Competence b. Confident in the treatment c. Warmth/compassionate 2. Setting characteristics: a. Patient-provider communication b. The setting appears to have "medical formality." c. The appearance of the placebo (shape, size, color, taste, and dosage) foul-tasting placebos work better; so do oddly-shaped placebos and very specific dosages (take two every four hours). 3. Patient characteristics: a. Self-esteem (low self-esteem produce greater placebo effects) b. Internal vs. external locus of control (external= greater effects) c. To what extent do placebo effects correlate with measures related to hypnotizability? *absorption *imaginative involvement *effortless experiencing d. Expectation is the primary determinant of placebo Norman Cousins: "The placebo is an emissary between the will to live and the body. But the emissary is expendable." Morphine loses as much as 25% of its effectiveness in reducing pain when patients DON'T know that they've been injected with a painkiller. 11/13/07- Term Paper: To get the full 20 points, you must meet the length and topic requirement. The topics are just your impressions, feelings, and experiences when doing the exercises on the CDs and one optional exercise. Pain Management 30-50 million chronic pain sufferers (back pain, arthritis, joint pain, pain related to cancer) $30 billion spent on prescription pain medication (in 2006) Physical aspects of pain: Three kinds of pain receptors in the peripheral nervous system: 1. Mechanical- detects tearing or shearing of tissue 2. Thermal- detects extremes of temperature 3. Polymodal—detects a combination of several different kinds of pain Two types of pain fibers that carry pain signals to the brain: A-delta-- Small, myelinated, transmit shar pain, and they carry information about the sensory aspect of pain (thalamus and somatosensory cortex) C-fibers-- Large, unmyelinated, polymodal, transmit dull or aching pain, and carry information about the motivational and affective aspects of pain (thalamus, then to the hypothalamus and to various cortical areas).
Pain is what happens in the body; suffering is our interpretation of that pain and our response to it. Brain regulates the amount of pain that an individual experiences by transmitting signals back to the spinal cord that block the transmission of pain in the peripheral nervous system. Endogenous opioids (e.g., endorphins-- "endogenous morphine"). Sympathetic-induced analgesia (SIA)-- The first stage of stress response is the alarm reaction. During this stage, the body generates endorphins and that release produces an analgesic effect. What is the difference between "analgesia" and "anesthesia"? Anesthesia is preventing pain that hasn't happened yet. Analgesia is relieving pain that is already there. Psychological aspects of pain Pain is influenced by a number of psychological variables: 1. Context-- While playing sports, people have less sensitivity to pain (SIA-- sympathetic arousal temporarily reduces sensitivity to pain) 2. Stress can aggravate pain. So can anxiety, depression, and anger. 3. Ethnic and cultural differences in pain sensitivity. 4. Gender differences- Women in general have greater sensitivity to pain. Chronic Pain Personality is linked to the experience of chronic pain. A relatively high percentage of chronic pain sufferers score highly on the following three subscales of the MMPI: 1. Hypochondriasis-- Excessive preoccupation with illness. 2. Hysteria-- Unmanageable fear or other emotional process that produces physical symptoms without an organic cause. 3. Depression
1. Pain medication- The body builds a tolerance to drugs. 2. Surgery- lesion pain fibers
1. Biofeedback-- Has only worked modestly in treating chronic pain because autonomic processes such as heart rate and bp are unpredictably related to pain. For some kinds of pain such as tension headaches or TMJ (temporomandibular joint disorder) One theory about pain is that it is an interruption in the normal flow of neural impulses. This is the premise used in chiropractic care 2. Relaxation-- For certain kinds of pain, low levels of arousal and physical relaxation are useful, such as muscle tension. But overall, the benefits of PMR are modest. 3. Meditation-- The effects are mixed, possibly due to the fact that there are different forms of meditation. Concentrative techniques might draw attention away from the pain, but mindfulness techniques will actually heighten awareness of everything happening in the body. 4. Hypnosis-- Used in anesthesia (surgery, childbirth, dentistry), but also to some degree in analgesia (burn patients, headaches, and chronic pain due to cancer). Why does it work? Perhaps because it produces a dissociation or split in consciousness. 5. Acupuncture-- In the US, we have empirical data that acupuncture works but we don't understand why, and the reason we don't is that we don't accept the Chinese explanation having to do with the flow of "chi", which is energy in the body. 6. Guided imagery-- Most interdisciplinary pain management programs teach some version of imagery. The patient may use relaxing imagery to draw attention from the pain, or use aggressive imagery to visualize their body attacking the source of the pain. 11/8/07- Stress Management: Stress, like other human emotions, may have started out more as a physical response and become more psychological. Disgust is an interesting example. It activates the insula (taste) and the olfactory bulb (smell). Disgust was probably originally a mechanism for detecting something noxious in our physical environment. At some point, it got "cognitivized" Stress- response to a threat that puts us in physical danger (fight-or-flight response). Today, we've generalized that response to include things that endanger us psychologically as well as physically, affecting our self-image, our status, our financial situation. At the core of stress is our self-concept and our minds. Basic stress management program: 1. Learn to identify the stressors in your life. 2. Aquire and practice skills for coping with stress. 3. Apply those skills in stressful sitatuions and monitor their effectiveness. Step #2: What are these techniques. Some are cognitive-behavioral. 1. Change our self-talk. "I hate giving presentations." "I'm not good at giving presentations." "I'll probably forget what I have to say as soon as I get up there." Negative self-talk; convert that to positive self-talk. 2. Time-management skills-- for those who are overburdened Goal setting, scheduling, prioritizing 3. Contingency contracting-- rewarding yoursel for meeting goals 4. Stress inoculation-- practice dealing with stressful situations 5. Relaxation Training a. Progressive Muscle Relaxation Developed by Edmund Jacobson in the 1920's The technique involves tensing a muscle and then relaxing it. The muscle goes to a more relaxed state than baseline. Why? Opponent-process theory- The primary process, such as fear, starts first; a counterbalancing process, such as elation, kicks in later and lasts longer. Instructor's conspiracy theory: Jacobson derived PMR from working with Yogananda, who came to the US in 1920 and was teaching a set of techniques he called "energization." b. Biofeedback training Designed to reduce autonomic arousal: slow down heart rate, minimize muscle tension. c. Meditation d. Hynosis 11/6/07- Announcements: 1. Special Guest Presenter Today: Rev. Henry Ajiki (What a great demo that was!) 2. Midterm 2 scores are now posted online (http://vas.web.arizona.edu). Grade Cutoffs: A 25-30 B 20-24
C 15-19 D 10-14
What is stress? Is it real? A response, both physical and psychological, to a perceived threat. NOTE: The threat is *perceived*; it doesn't have to be real. From a physiological standpoint: Walter Cannon - When an organism perceives threat, the body is rapidly aroused and motivated by the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system to carry out a fight-or-flight response. Hans Selye- coined the term "stress" and said that all stressors produce the same pattern of response, which he called the "general adaptation syndrome." This sydrome has three stages: 1. Alarm reaction-- Organism gets mobilized to meet the threat. 2. Resistance- The body repairs any damage caused by the stressor in an attempt to regain homeostasis. 3. Exhaustion- If the stressor continues indefinitely, the body's resources get depleted. Symptoms of exhaustion include increased vulnerability to disease, immune supression, increases in blood pressure. Physiologically, there are two systems activated by a stress response: 1. Sympathetic-adrenal-medulla (SAM) system-- From the cerebral cortex, a signal gets sent to the hypothalamus, which activates the sympathetic nervous system by triggering the adrenal glands to secrete catecholamines (epinephrine, norepinephrine). The part of the adrenal glands that secretes catecholamines is the medulla. 2. Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)- Hypothalamus releases corticotrophin-releasing-factor (CRF), which stimulates the pituitary to secrete adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which stimulates the adrenal cortex to secrete corticosteroids, and most notably cortisol. Cortisol is designed to consever energy in the body and to increase blood glucose. In the long-term, cortisol increase bp, impairs sleep, affects memory, increases fat deposit in the waist area. Symptoms of long-term stress response and exhaustion: 1. Decrease in cell-mediated immunity. 2. Inability to shut off cortisol production. 3. Lowered heart-rate variability. 4. High catecholamine levels. 5. High waist-to-hip ratio 6. Decreased hippocampus volume. 7. Memory problems. 8. High bp Lazarus et al-- Showed films to subjects of a tribal initiation rite that included genital surgery. Those subjects who listened to an account of what was happening that focused on the significance of the ritual or that de-emphasized the pain showed less of a stress response than those who either had no information or whose attention was drawn to the pain. Many stressors are neutral: a crowd, traffic, waiting in line. It is only the cognitive interpretation of those stimuli that results in a stress response. Part of stress is attachment to: 1. An outcome-- we expect things to turn out differently than they do. 2. People and things that we value- When we feel that we cannot live without something, then being deprived of it is stressful. Part of stress is not wanting things to change: Suffering = change Impermanence- all things must change The term "stress" includes grief, anger, frustration, depression, anxiety. 10/30/07- REVIEW SESSION Subliminal perception- Originally, "subliminal" meant "below the limen," a hypothetical threshold of our sensory perception. Researchers realized that the limen, which is an objective threshold, is as low as you get. Something presented below that threshold never gets processed by our perceptual apparatus. Today, subliminal has come to mean information presented below the subjective threshold, which is the minimum intensity, duration, etc. required for awareness of that sensory information. If perceptual information is presented below the subjective threshold but above the objective threshold, it may an effect on your experience, thought, and action (e.g., galvanic skin response) even though you are unaware of it. The preferred term for perceptual information that affects you even though you are unaware of it is "implicit perception." Silverman-- Psychodynamic researcher who tested the phrase "Mommy and I are one." He found that when that phrase is presented subliminally, it can have some interesting effects on subjects. In non-clinical populations, cognitive performance can improve. One well-known clinical effect is that the subliminal presentation of that phrase helped smokers quit smoking. "The Hidden Persuaders"-- discusses the advertising industry's use of subliminal messages. In masked priming studies, a stimulus such as the word DOCTOR is flashed on a computer screen in a manner that prevents the subject from consciously seeing it. And yet, the subject shows a priming for DOCTOR on subsequent tests (e.g. lexical decision), as well as for related words such as NURSE. This effect is rarely seen for two-word phrases and has never been found for phrases consisting of more than two words, with one notable exception: MOMMY AND I ARE ONE. Janet Metcalfe- Used a metacognitive measure called "feeling of warmth" (FOW), in which the subject indicates whether or not s/he is getting closer to the answer to a specific problem. Years earlier, Herb Simon had shown that FOW was a predictor of progress on algebra and other mathematical problems. Metcalfe showed that subjects' FOW judgments are not predictive of how close they are to a solution to an "insight problem." Insight problems are problems devised by the Gestalt psychologists that require a different way of looking at things to solve. The creative spirit is the source from which creativity arises in your consciousness. It is not the mind; it is inherently mysterious because it exists outside of language, concepts, and all forms of thought. The ultimate of new forms must exist beyond form, because if form always arises from form (e.g., if thoughts always arise from other thoughts), then at some point you reach a serious logical dilemma, which has to do with the question: Where did the first form (e.g., thought) come from? 4P's of creativity: *Person-- What makes the creative personality unique? What are the traits associated with creativity? Correlations of creativity with absorption, hypnotizability, imaginative involvement, and effortlessness (.62). Measurement of creativity of the individual: The mostly commonly used creativity test is the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). *Process-- How does the process of creativity work? How can we facilitate creativity? What is happening to consciousness during this process? *Product-- How do we construct new and innovative products? *Press-- Situational variables that give rise to creativity. Posthypnotic suggestion is a suggestion given during hypnosis that is going to affect behavior after the hypnosis session is completed. For example, in a laboratory situation, a subject might be given the suggestion for posthypnotic amnesia, in which s/he is unable to recall information learned during the session until the hypnotist reverses the suggestion ("Now you can remember everything.") Clairvoyance-- One of the ways that clairvoyance has been tested is using Zener cards, in which the subject has to guess information that s/he cannot detect through normal sensory perception. 10/25/07- Announcements: 1. Review this coming Tuesday 2. Midterm 2 a week from today
4. Intuition The basic guidance system for all individuals, not just creative ones.
Imagination is more than mental imagery. It is the ability to conceive of something that doesn't exist YET, to really get a sense of what that alternative reality would be like. Imagining something is an important step to realizing it because if you can imagine it, you start to act as if it is real. More effective than imagining the end result by itself is to imagine the process by which you get there. 10/23/07- Announcements: 1. Darrell Hicks brochures (sound demo) 2. Today's demo: Heidi Wilson- Tai Chi 3. Review Session Next Tues 4. Midterm 2 Next Thurs 5. Very special guest demo-11/6 CREATIVITY What is creativity? Two factors: Originality-- Doing something that hasn't been done before. Appropriateness-- Is it adaptive, useful, valuable, of quality?
Product
Process Press- situational conditions that give rise to creativity, including motivational influences Theories of Creativity Psychoanalytic Theory-- According to Freud, creativity is a form of regression from secondary-process thinking (logical, reality-bound) to primary-process (pre-logical, drive dominated). Secondary-process thiniing is associated with the ego and primary-process with the id. Kris- "Regression in the service of the ego" that is initiated by the ego not out of defense but for its own benefit. Adaptive regression-- creativity, hypnosis Creative Personality- Absorption-- total attention, and there is an element of fantasy and imagination Tellegen Absorption Scale: "I can sometimes recollect certain past experiences in my life with such clarity and vividness that it's like living them again, or almost so." "I am sometimes able to forget about my present self, and get absorbed in a fantasy that I am someone else." Absorption correlation with hypnotizability (r = .25) and also with creativity (r = .39). Measurement of creativity is the big problem in this field. There are over 200 creativity tests in use. The "best" measure is called the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). A battery of figural and verbal subtests, that are scored on four dimensions: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. Imaginative involvement/fantasy proneness-- Correlates significantly with both creativity and hypnotizability. How well do creativity and hypnotizability correlate to each other? r=.55 The Creative Process P.G. Bowers developed a scale of effortless experiencing. The reason is that involuntariness or effortlessness is a very important part of hypnosis (the classic suggestion effect is when it feels like your responses to suggestions are occurring involuntarily). The experience of effortlessness is also very characteristic of creativity. Ideas "just came to me." Bowers had subjects perform a variety of imagery, fantasy, and problem-solving tasks and then asked them to rate the effortlessness with which they performed those tasks, on a five-point scale: 1-- High ease. Ideas just popped into mind; no effort needed to develop it. 5-- High difficulty; constantly made an effort to get and keep an image.
Bowers conclued that the style of the individual is what is most likely to be related to hypnotizability. Those artistic people who work in a logical, methodical way may not show correlations among creativity, hypnotizability, and effortlessness. A shift from the active mode to the passive mode. The active mode is goal-oriented, has expectations and strategies; and uses language; the passive mode is image-based and has a wider associative network. 10/18/07- Intuition Wallas (1926)- There are four phases of problem-solving:
Wallas indicated that the Illumination phase is preceded by something he called an “intimation,” which is an indication that the solution is forthcoming. Today, we refer to this as an intuition. For a long time, psychologists did not study intuition because it considered irrational, fuzzy, and even a sign of mental laziness. Some researchers, such as Nisbett & Wilson, have argued that intuition is sloppy. In a paper called, “On Telling More than We Can Know,” they showed that people are not able to introspect very well on the causes of their own actions—at least in certain situations. In one of their studies, Nisbett & Wilson asked subjects to select from among several pairs of black socks. There were no differences among the socks except for their arrangement on a table. Once a choice had been made, the researchers asked the subjects to explain why they had chosen one pair of socks over the rest. Although the subjects gave various explanations for their choices, the only variable that seemed to be predictive of their sock preference was the position of the socks on the table. From this, the researchers concluded that people’s self-knowledge—and their intuition in particular—tends to be unreliable. But does having a sense about why you chose one pair of socks over the others have anything at all to do with intuition? Other researchers have focused on intuition as a form of metacognition, which literally means “cognition about cognition.” A metacognition is an awareness of one’s own mental processes. Here are a few examples:
The idea, in this line of research, is that intuition is a feeling based on unconscious processes involving memory and thought. They are based on partial information; in other words, some processing has happened, but not enough for the person to become aware of the right answer. Instead, the person has a “feeling” of some kind related to this answer that they have not yet reached. But intuition seems like a more far-ranging and complex phenomenon than this. In a broader sense, it can be defined as “knowing without knowing how you know.” One class of intuition that has not been considered very extensively by psychologists is the ability to know something without inferring it or detecting it through the five senses. For instance, in the Intuition in Pregnancy study conducted by Shamas & Dawson here at U of A, the researchers asked pregnant women who had not yet had a sonogram to predict the sex of their baby. Those women whose predictions were based on an intuition (i.e., a gut feeling or dream) were accurate nearly 70% of the time. This effect cannot be explained, to the best of our knowledge, by any kind of rational or perceptual process. These women knew the sex of their baby through some other means. Intuition can be thought of as a built-in guidance system that every human being possesses. The function of this system, among other things, is survival. Anyone who has made it to adulthood has probably had some “close calls”—situations in which the individual barely avoided serious injury or death. In those situations, we get a sense that someone or something is looking out for us. The Romans called this overseer the person’s Genius; to the Greeks, it was known as the “daimon”; Christians may use terms such as “guardian angel”; the Egyptians referred to it as the “ka” or “ba” and claimed that it is possible to converse with it; and the Eskimos call it the “spirit” or “free soul.” 10/16/07- Implicit Learning-- The effect of learned patterns or rules on our experience, thought and action, even though we may not be aware of that learned material. Children from a vocabulary of 0 at birth to a vocabulary of over 5000 words at age five, including an understanding of grammatical rules. Noam Chomsky--Nativism. This is the idea that the ability to learn language is innate. Chomsky claimed that: 1) the language that infants and toddlers hear is too complicated and ambiguous for them to be able to discern the rules; and 2) humans have a language acquisition device (LAD) that allows them to pick up the rules of language relatively easily. Behaviorist position is that language is a learned behavior. Arthur Reber-- Artificial grammar learning. Grammatical rules: 1. The first letter of a sequence can be either a P or a T. 2. If the first letter is a P, then the second letter must be a T or a V. 3. If the second letter is a T, the T can recur in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc positions. 4. After the sequence of Ts, there must be a V. PVPXVPS PTTTVPS Subjects were asked in Phase 1 of the experiment to memorize a list of sequences that had been generated using an artificial grammar. Then, in Phase 2, they are shown sequences and given a recognition task: "Which sequences were among those you studied?" None of the sequences in Phase 2 were familiar, but half were generated according to the artificial grammar (i.e., grammatical) and the other half were non-grammatical. The subjects picked the grammatical sequences as being more familiar, even though they had not seen them. Reber: At a level that subjects were not aware of, they had internalized the grammatical rules. Infants ("baby genius") 1. During the last six weeks of pregnancy, mothers are asked to read a passage aloud to their babies. Shortly after birth, the infants show that they can discriminate the familiar passages from new ones. Sucking rates-- The infants were conditioned to change their sucking rate in order to hear the familiar passage. 2. Infants that are less than 1 week old can recognize their mother based on sound and smell. 3. Friedman-- Habituated 1-3 day-olds to one visual pattern and then, immediately after habiuation, showed the babies a novel pattern. The infants showed longer response times to the new stimuli. 4. 1-month-olds can be taught to differentiate between "BA" and "PA." 5. 4.5-6-month olds showed a preference for natural vs. unnatural spacing in listening to Mozart minuets. 6. 6.5-month-olds could differentiate between in-tune and out-of-tune musical sequences in both a Western and a Javanese scales. 7. Karen Wynn (1992)- 5-month-olds could do simple math. Infants were shown two scenarios: 1 + 1 = 2 and 1 + 1 =1 and they stared longer at the second scenario. 10/11/07- Extraordinary sensory perception Touch-- Hypnotized individuals could tell just by touch whether or not a metal bar was magnetized. Helen Keller could distinguish sounds of instruments by touch the phonograph record. Some blind individuals can recognize the color of a fabric by touch. Smell-- "Hyperosmia" is heightened sense of smell People who claim to detect rainstorms by smell. Dogs: One drop of blood in five quarts of water. Some dogs have been trained to detect drugs, bombs, and even cancer. There are dogs that can detect melanoma with 99% accuracy. Extrasensory Perception Clairvoyance-- The ability to experience the occurrence of something without actually perceiving it. Precognition--The ability to predict a future event. Telepathy-- The ability to read someone's thoughts.
THINKING AND LEARNING Just as there is implicit memory and perception, there is evidence for implicit thinking and implicit learning. Thinking-- The mathematician Poincare came up with the "unconscious work" hypothesis. Janet Metcalfe study: Tested feeling of warmth (FOW) in problem-solver solving either a mathematical problem or an "insight problem." She found that FOW increased incrementally for the math problem but in a non-incremental way for the insight problem. Incubation effects-- An improvement in problem-solving performance as a result of setting aside the problem for a while. "Sleeping on it." Incubation effects are not necessarily proof of "unconscious work" because they may be simply be the result of letting go of an ineffective strategy. Ken Bowers gave subjects sets of word triads taken from the Remote Associates Test (RAT; developed by Mednick in the 1960's as a test of creativity). Some triads were soluble: Find the word that these three words have in common- PLAYING CREDIT REPORT Answer: CARD Some triads were not soluble STILL PAGES MUSIC If subjects could not generate the solution to the soluble triad, they were forced to pick which one of the two triads was soluble. Bowers found that the subjects could consistently distinguish between the soluble and insoluble triads. Shames (1994) found that there is unconscious processing of RAT solutions. Subjects were given RAT problems and a total of five seconds in which to solve them. After five seconds, they were asked if they knew the solution. Then, they were given a lexical-decision task (in which the subject sees letter strings and has to decide if they are legitimate English words or not). WERK The subjects showed a priming effect for words that were the solution to the RAT items they had seen, but only if they hadn't solved the problem yet. If they had the solved the problem, they showed NO priming effect. This is evidence of implicit problem-solving, which is the effect of a solution to a problem on our experience, thought, and action, even though we are unaware of that solution. 10/9/07- PERCEPTION, PART 2 "Mommy and I are one" presented in a masked fashion has a number of effects on both clinical and non-clinical populations, including improved test performance and greater success rates in smoking cessation programs. Implicit Perception in Clinical Populations Weiskrantz (1986)- "Blindsight." Patient with damage to the visual cortex who was unable to report seeing anything in his visual field, yet he demonstrated a better-than-chance accuracy in discriminiating visual stimuli. The accuracy of performance was at approximately 60%, which is significantly greater than chance although far from perfect. Patients with prosopagnosia (inability to recognize faces) are able to respond differently to new vs. familiar faces. They may show a galvanic skin response to familiar faces. Patients with functional blindness (a conversion disorder) also show a differential response to familiar objects and faces. In hypnosis, blindness and deafness can be induced through hypnotic suggestion. People with hypnotic blindness or deafness show signs of being affected by stimuli that they can cannot perceive consciously. For example, somebody who has been given a suggestion of hypnotic deafness in one ear alone is given a dichotic listening task. They are told to shadow the information presented in their "good" ear, and they show intrusions (i.e., mistakes) of information presented to their "deaf" ear. Suggestions of hypnotic anesthesia do not affect psycho-physiological response to pain stimuli. Hypnotized subjects are processing pain information even though they are not aware of it. EXTRAORDINARY SENSORY PERCEPTION Vision- Hypnosis: Improvements in visual acuity that result from hypnotic suggestion. There is a case of awoman who was trained during hypnosis to distinguish acquaintanes (with the use of binoculars) standing three miles away. "In the Zone" by Rhea White and Michael Murphy chronicles numerous examples of athletes who report experiencing visual perception during athletic competition. Hearing- Case studies have been reported in which subjects could detec a hiss at a distance of 230 yards, when non-hypnotized individuals could only hear it at 30 yards. 10/4/07- Final Exam: 60 questions, 20 of which are from Units 1 and 2. You will not be tested on material that didn't appear on one of those two exams. Only the objectives and key terms that you were tested on already from Units 1 and 2 will reappear on the final, although the form of the questions may be different. Midterm 1 is posted in one of the glass cases on the third floor hallway of the Psyc Bldg. MEMORY, PART 2 Do alterations of consciousness ever improve memory? Hypnotic hypermnesia-- One of the most controversial findings in hypnosis research is the claim that hypnosis can be used to recover forgotten experiences (repressed memory debate). In the lab, hypnosis has been shown to enhance memory for words and pictures. But researchers have found that hypnosis tends to lead to the recall of BOTH correct and incorrect information. Hypnosis lowers response criteria (i.e., the standards used by an individual for checking the accuracy of a response). Fluency-- The flow of ideas and responses. Hypnotized individuals do better at recalling words that they processed during a "deep" task versus a "shallow" task, without inaccurate recall. Levels-of-processing theory of memory -- Information is memory to the extent that it has been processed in a "deep" or meaningful way. Marijuana: The accepted viewpoint is that marijuana impairs STM and encoding into LTM. Rastafarian-- children are sometimes introduced to marijuana at a young age and in a sacramental fashion. Children exposed to marijuana from an early age show improvements in performance under the influence of marijuana. There are no other known groups that demonstrate such improvements. THC in rats may actually stimulate neuronal growth in the hippocampus. Superlearning: Based on a system developed by a Bulgarian physician named Georgi Lozanov ("suggestopedia"), which uses Baroque music, which has a tempo of 60beats/minute, and plays that music in the background while students memory lists of vocabulary in foreign languages. The finding, which has not been consistently replicated, is that retention levels skyrocket when students learn under these conditions. PERCEPTION Sensation-- The information that comes through your five senses. Perception-- The interpretation of that information. Percept-- Perceptual representation. This our interpretation of a pattern of sensory information that allows us to call that pattern a "Chair" or a "Bird." Subliminal perception- Assumes the existence of something called a "limen." The limen is now referred to as the "objective threshold" of your sensory system; this is the minimimum intensity and duration of a stimulus that your sensory system can detect. There is a second threshold that is called the "subjective threshold"; this is the set of conditions that allow you to become AWARE of a stimulus. What if you have a stimulus that is above the objective threshold and below the subjective threshold? This is not the same as "subliminal" stimuli, which would be below both thresholds. In this case, we have what is called IMPLICIT PERCEPTION, which is defined as the effect of a percept on our experience, thought and action even though we are unaware of that percept. Marcel (1983)-- The masked priming effect On a computer screen, the subjects saw: ###### (500 ms) DOCTOR (20 ms) ###### (500 ms) Then, the subjects were given a lexical decision task, in which they see a letter string and they have to decide if it's a word or a non-word Not only were the subjects faster and more accurate at responding to DOCTOR than they were to a control word, they were also faster and more accurate at responding to a related word like NURSE. Greenwald, Klinger & Leu (1989)- Showed that people can process the emotional content of masked stimuli. Seeing an emotionally-charged word like ENEMY causes them to show a priming effect for "negative" evaluative judgment words like BAD. Silverman (1976, 1983)- Subjects were presented the following phrase in a masked fashion: MOMMY AND I ARE ONE. Smokers in a smoking cessation program showed better abstinence rates; normal subjects showed improvements on a number of different kinds of tests. 10/2/07- Announcements: 1. Midterm 1 Scores have been posted on http://vas.web.arizona.edu. Just look for the "Psyc 358 Grades" link. 2. The cutoffs are as follows: A 25-30
B 20-24 C 15-19
D 10-14 3. Some of you used 7-digit ID's, and we can't post your scores. Please contact Dusana: dusana@email.arizona.edu. 4. Heart Shrine Relics Tour- Dec 14-16, 2007 MEMORY Two kinds of phenomena with respect to memory that are related to consciousness studies: 1. Memory without consciousness. 2. The effect of "consciousness expansion" on memory.
Procedural- "knowing how" Declarative- "knowing that"
1. Encoding-- Information has to be put in a form or "code" that results in a lasting memory 2. Storage- Not a static process 3. Retrieval- Partly a reconstruction process Multistore Model of memory- Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) The concept of STM has been expanded. Baddeley & Hitch (1974)- Working memory, which has three components: 1. Phonological loop- Maintining acoustic information in memory 2. Visuaspatial sketchpad- Maintaining visual information 3. Central Executive-- Directs the flow of information, choosing which information will be processed, when and how. Homunculus- "small man" III. Explicit vs. implicit memory Explicit- memory with awareness Implicit- Kihlstrom: "Implicit memory is the effect of previous experience on our current thought, experience, and action, even though we may not have conscious recollection of that experience." The research on implicit memory started with the study of patients suffering from amnesic syndrome resulting from bilateral damage to the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus. These patients showed dense anterograde amnesia, even though other intellectual functions were intact. Yet, these patients showed PRIMING EFFECTS, which are improvements in performance (accuracy or speed) as a result of prior exposure to a stimulus. Typical experiment: Give an amnesic patient a list of words to study, then test their recall. Although recall is poor, they are more likely to complete a wordstem or word fragment with a word from the list compared to a control word. Word Stem: CON_______ ("CONTACT" was on the list) Fragment: A___A___I___ ("ASSASSIN" was on the list) These effects are not limited to amnesic patients. People with normal memory show implicit memory that is independent of recognition or recall. What happens to implicit memory when we alter or expand consciousness? Implicit memory in Hypnosis-- In hypnotized individuals who are given a list of words to study and then a suggestion that they won't be able to recall the words, recall performance is poor until the suggestion is reversed. But implicit memory is relatively intact; these individuals show priming for words that they cannot recall because of a posthypnotic suggestion. There is a big difference between posthypnotic amnesia and patients with amnesic syndrome: Encoding. Patients with amnesia may have impaired encoding, which means that the information was never properly stored in memory in the first place. With posthypnotic suggestion, there is a temporary retrieval failure. The information is momentarily inaccessible to awareness. All that has to happen to make it accessible again is to reverse the posthypnotic suggestion ("Now you can remember everything."). Implicit memory has also been seen in general anesthesia. During anesthesia, patients were read lists of paired associates like OCEAN-WATER. After awakening, they could not recall any of the words on the list, but they were more likely to respond to the cue word, OCEAN, with WATER, than they were with a matched control word. How about sleep? There have some studies that showed that implicit memory is preserved to some extent. But the most well-known study (Wood, Bootzin, Kihlstom, & Schacter, 1992) failed to support the finding of implicit memory in sleep. Later, the researchers admitted that were possible methodological problems, because they looked at semantic priming instead of repetition priming. Repetition priming: Seeing DOCTOR once makes you respond faster or more accurately to DOCTOR the next time around. Semantic priming: Seeing DOCTOR makes you respond faster or more accurately to related words like NURSE or HOSPITAL. State-Dependent Memory Material learned while under the influence of a drug such as alcohol or marijuana is recalled better when the person re-creates the state at the time of retrieval. Encoding Specific-- Information is recalled more effectively when the same cues that were available at the time of encoding are also present at the time of retrieval. 9/25/07- Announcements 1. Midterm 1 on Thurs 2, Flotation Tank:
still-waters@cox.net www.tucsonstillwaters.com 777-4842
1. Harvard Group Scale- group screening 2. Stanford Scale Three kinds of items: 1. Ideomotor- physical movement produced as a result of a suggestion Example: hand lowering
Example: arm rigidity 3. Cognitive item- the suggestion results in a change in perception, thinking, memory or any other cognitive capacity Example: fly hallucination Nova Dreamer-- lucid dreaming tool designed by Stephen LaBerge; the device consists of a black mask with motion sensors that detect REM Trance logic-- A phenomenon that occurs in hypnosis that is not consistent with ordinary logic. A hypnotized individual can "see" a hallucinated and actual person both occupying the same chair at the same time (this is fairly unusual but does happen). Hypnotic induction-- The procedure used to induce hypnosis. Many different kinds of inductions have been used including relaxation, mental imagery (visualization), and confusional techniques. Tellegen Absorption Scale- The items look at how focused people can be and how immersed in their own fantasies, imagery, etc. "I sometimes forget about my present self..." Somebody getting "lost" in something: a book, a movie, a creative process, reverie Deikman (1963)- blue vase study; participants stared at a vase for 15 minutes. Three things they reported: 1. vase became more vivid and luminous 2. The shape became unstable, as if the vase were losing its boundaries. 3. A blurring of the subject-object distinction occurred for some individuals. Stroop effect-- the interference of reading a word such as "RED" on the recognition of a color such as BLUE. During hypnosis, the Stroop effect is greatly reduced for highly hypnotizable individuals. Noetic quality-- The word "noetic" comes from the Greek "gnosis" which means "to know." A noetic quality is the sensation or experience of knowing things directly without the intervention of thought. Most often, that experience comes with a sense of connectedness or unity, wherein the individual feels connected to others or even to all things. According to James, experiences that have a noetic quality come with certain insights and illuminations that last long after the experience is over. "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe Long-Term Memory is part of a memory systems view of memory that proposes a set of systems that include LTM and Short-Term Memory. LTM includes both episodic memory, which is memory about the events in your life, and semantic memory, which is "disembodied" facts. implicit memory would be a subset of LTM, specifically referring to information in memory that is exerting an influence on your present experience, thought, and action even though you are unaware of this information Hypnotic suggestions have improved visual acuity in nearsighted subjects. Split consciousness-- Hilgard proposed "neodissociation theory," in which processes and cognitive structures that are normally connected to consciousness become disconnected or dissociated. For example, in the arm rigidity item of the Stanford Scale, passing that item requires the individual to keep their arm rigid without being aware of doing so. Neodissociation theory can explain how something that is normally in your awareness drops out of it, but it doesn't do as good a job explaining how something that you are not aware of normally enters awareness. How does a hypnotized subject get better at the Stroop or improve visual acuity? Consciousness is split, both in hypnosis and under the influence of marijuana, because often people experiencing at two levels: 1. The "experiencer" 2. The "hidden observer" Cold pressor pain-- The researcher places the hypnotized subject's hand in cold water. Compared to a non-hypnotized subject, the hypnotized individual experiences less pain and endures the cold water longer. But when the researcher asks the "hidden observer" to rate the amount of pain to which the person is being exposed, the pain ratings are comparable to those of a nonhypnotized subject. Descartes said that the pineal was the point at which the soul enters the body. 9/20/07- Announcements: 1. Review session on Tues (9/25) 2. First midterm on Thurs (9/27) 30 multiple-choice questions; Please arrive on time. Psychedelic Drugs Psychoactive drugs-- drugs used primarily for psychological effects on mood, thinking, behavior, perception. These drugs interact with neurotransmitter systems in the body. Cocaine mimics dopamine. "Psychedelic" literally means "mind-expanding." Psychedelic drugs are a heterogeneous group that include marijuana (minor psychedelic-- users generally feal more control when using the drug) and the hallucinogens (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline), which are considered major psychedelics. Marijuana Has been the subject of more systematic research than any other psychedelic drug. (salvia divinorum-- form of sage used in the tropics) Derives from the hemp plant (cannabis sativa), which has been an important plant for thousands of years, used in making rope, sails, fine cloth. The main active ingredient (there are 80 cannabinoids) is delta-9-tetrahydrocannbinol (THC), which is concentrated in the resin that is found on the flowers, seeds, and upper leaves of the female plant. There are records of marijuana use dating back thousands of years to parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 19th century, marijuana was often prescribed as a medicinal drug. In 1970, the Controlled Substance Act made it illegal. 64% of young adults (18-25) have tried it and 27% are current users Research on the subjective effects (Tart) shows: 1. Sensory Perception Seeing patterns or forms in visual material that are not normally observed Hearing more subtle changes in sound Heightened sense of touch, taste, and smell Increased enjoyment of food ("munchies") Increased sensuality; intensified orgasms
4. Memory Rapidly forgetting conversations, read information, and one's general train of thought Marijuana disrupts STM and also the ability of information to be transferred from STM to LTM 5. Thinking New insights; increase in originality More accepting of contradictions (reminiscent of "trance logic") Getting lost in thought or fantasy, and being immersed in the present (reminiscent of "absorption" and "imaginative involvement")
Physical relaxation, letting go Accepting whatever happens (sense of surrender) reminiscent of the classic suggestion effect, in which people have the perception of involuntariness THC is fat soluble and gets absorbed in practically all of the body's tissues; it also leaves the body slowly Cannabinoid are among the most common in the human brain, especially in the hippocampus, basal ganglia, cerebellum, and parts of the cerebral cortex There are endogenous cannabinoids, such as anandamide ("ananda" is Sanskrit for bliss). Their effect is to inhibit the release of glutamate (excitatory) and GABA (inhibitory). Cannabinoids inhibit GABA release in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), which has an abundance of dopaminergic neuron. The VTA is the starting point for the brain's major reward pathway. GABA would normally inhibit dopamine release, but because it gets inhibited by THC and other cannabinoids, the end result is an increase in dopamine release. Psilocybin- occurs in a type of mushroom that is found most commonly in Mexico and the United States. The Aztecs used psilocybin in their spiritual ceremonies, and even though the Spaniards tried to stop the use of "magic mushrooms," these ceremonies continue today. Psilocybin, LSD, and a number of other hallucinogens mimic serotonin in the brain. Mescaline simulates norepinephrine. Mescaline is the main active ingredient in peyote. 9/18- Announcements: 1. Thurs class ends early 2. Tues (9/25)- Review Session 3. Thurs (9/27)- Midterm 1 4. KUAT interview- http://www.kuat.org (click on "Arizona Spotlight" link) 5. Guest presenter today: Aryen Hart 6. Midterm 1: 30 multiple choice questions BIOFEEDBACK What is it? Biofeedback- A behavioral technique that increases the individual's awareness of specific physiological responses so that s/he can bring those responses under control. Controlled vs. autonomic responses Autonomic response-- heart rate, b.p., muscle tone, EEG, GSR (galvanic skin response, a measure of perspiration on the surface of the skin), skin-surface temperature "Autonomic" comes from the same root as "autonomous"; independent of our conscious control and intention. The distinction betweeen controlled and autonomic behavior has become blurred because: 1. Even voluntary responses are to some degree outside of our conscious control. Even a simple, routine task like moving a finger is a black box. 2. Biofeedback research has shown that responses labeled as "autonomic" can be controlled, at least to some extent. In 1965, Lisina (Soviet Union) showed that the constriction and dilation of blood vessels in the finger could be conditioned using a visual feedback display of vasomotor activity. In 1968, Joe Kamiya published his first studies of alpha-wave biofeedback. Ss in Kamiya's study were hooked up to a visual feedback display showing their EEG activity, specifically in the 8-13 Hz range. Through practice, these Ss could alter the amplitude of alpha activity in their brain. Biofeedback training places the individual in a closed feedback loop with an instrument that continually provides output about subtle changes in bodily processes. In turn, the individual adjusts his or her responses as more information is received. Some researchers argue that we cannot control autonomic processes directly but only indirectly by altering the activity of skeletal muscles. For example, we may not be able to slow down our breathing directly, but we can control the muscles surrounding our ribcase and in doing so have an indirect effect on breathing. How does biofeedback work? Biofeedback training happens in four types of sessions: 1. Baseline sessions. Here, the researchers or technician obtains a representative sample of some physiological response before training. 2. Shaping and reinforcement sessions. The trainee learns to bring about a change in a physiological response using a device with a display of some kind (most likely auditory or visual). 3. Instrument-free sessions. The trainee is required to produce the same physiological changes wtihout the use of external feedback. 4. Follow-up sessions. Testing occurs several weeks after the initial training to make sure that the trainee is still able to produce the physiological changes that were taught in the training sessions. Applications Treatment of headaches-- 80% of headaches are considered tension headaches, produced by sustained contraction of skeletal muscles isn the scalp, face, shoulders, and neck, combined with ischemia (blockage of blood flow) in these muscles. Budzynski-- EMG (electromyography) biofeedback with the frontalis muscle. Produced significant reductions in headache activity within eight weeks of the start of biofeedback training. A meta-analysis by Budzynski of 40 studies of tension headache confirmed that EMG biofeedback is effective at controlling these types of headaches. Some researchers claim that biofeedback is no more effective than relaxation training at controlling headaches. Migraine headaches are believed to be vasular headaches and they have the following characteristics: unilateral, accompanied by gastointestinal problems, and an aura or "prodome" phase, hypersensitivity. 60-80% of migraine patients show improvement with skin temperature biofeedback in combination with some type of relaxation or autogenic training. Asthma-- Combination of factors including allergies, stress, endocrine changes, genetics, and personality. Biofeedback training for facial muscle relaxation improves short-term pulmonary function. Biofeedback has been shown to be effective in treating: Depression ADHD (hyperactivity, attention deficit, learning deficits) stress-related incontinence in the elderly epilepsy in children irritable bowel syndrome speech disorders alcohol dependency hypertension painful menstrual symptoms Raynaud's disease-- constriction of blood vessels in the extremities that produce a cold, numb aching sensation 9/13/07- Announcements: 1. Term Paper 2. Book Release
Two processes associated with attention: a) Orienting Response-- When we perceive a stimulus in our environment, we show signs of processing the information associated with the stimulus. For example, when we hear a noise, if we're in a relaxed state, we will show "alpha blocking," which is a sudden decrease in alpha activity.
1. Reducing anxiety 2. Treating specific phobias 3. Addiction, drug/alcohol abuse 4. Treating insomnia
1. Speed recovery from myocardial infarction (heart attack) 2. Managing the symptoms of asthma 3. Treating hypertension 4. Stress-related health problems 5. Reducing the seizure frequency in epileptic patients Kasamatsu & Hirai- Zen monks can produce alpha wave activity at will and they can slow the frequency of alpha waves, from their normal range of 8-13 Hz down to 7-8 Hz. Wallace & Benson (1972)-- TM practitioners could reduce oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide elimination, respiration rate, heart rate, and blood-lactate levels. They could also increase alpha activity. The effects of collective meditation For a three-month period, a small group of meditators in Rhode Island meditated together a few times a week. During that time, the following trends were observed in their city: drops in crime rte, auto accidents, auto fatalities, and death due to alcohol consumption or smoking. This research is plagued by all kinds of methodological challenges. REST- Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique (REST) Sensory deprivation methods: 1. Flotation tanks 2. REST is putting somebody in a dark, quiet room. Suedfeld & Ikard (1974)- REST is effective in helping in quit smoking, and even in those smokers who start up again, the rate of smoking decreases in a lasting manner. Barabasz & Barabasz (1989)- REST can be used to enhance hypnotizability in pain sufferers, allowing hypnotic analgesia to be more effective. Recommended Readings: "The Everyday Meditator" and "The Book of Secrets" by Osho "In the Zone" by Rhea White & Michael Murphy 9/11/07- Meditation What is it? Meditation is both an experience and a practice. Ram Das: Be Here Now The experience is one of clarity, connection, transcendence, bliss. How do you get that experience? The practice of meditation is an attempt to find a systematic way to arrive at the experience of meditation. The methods for practicing meditation usually involve some of the following activities: Silencing thoughts Relaxing the mind "Bringing the mind home" "Resting in natural peace" Two types of techniques: I. Concentrative approaches-- Focusing your attention on a single object, limiting the input to your attentional resources. Zen Buddhist- focusing on breath, or on a "koan" (Riddle: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?") mantra- sound on which one focuses, "OM," the sound can be uttered or chanted mandala- a visual pattern mudra- physical movement or gesture Deikman (1963) - Subjects wee asked to stare at a blue vase for 15 minutes. Subjects reported the following experiences: 1. Vase became more vivid and luminous. 2. The shape became unstable, as if the vase lost its boundaries. 3. Subject-object merging: "At one point, it felt as though the vase were in my head rather than 'out there.' I knew it was out there but it seemed as though it were almost a part of me."
Tellegen Absorption Scale Items include: "I am sometimes able to forget about my present self..." Kihlstrom (1989) wrote that absorption is "the individual's capacity for dissociative and holistic experiences involving, respectively, the narrowing and broadening of attention." There are two components to absorption: 1. The first is disconnecting or "dissocating" from your normal pattern of experiencing the world, simply by focusing your attention narrowly on one thing. 2. After you disconnect, you shift into a new way of experiencing the world that is "holistic" and in which attention gets broadened. II. Mindfulness approaches ("opening up" meditation) Instead of narrowing the input to your attention, you expand it, taking in as much as you can in your field of attention without focusing in on anything. Deikman & Ornstein-- Two modes of attention 1. Active mode-- Focus on a single object and distinguish it from its surroundings; analytical, sequential 2. Receptive mode-- Staying open to experience rather than concentrating on an object; intuitive, holistic, trandscendent John Welwood The shift that occurs in meditation is like a figure-ground reversal, in which the experience of wholeness that is normally the ground (i.e., background) becomes the figure, and the conceptual thinking that is normally the figure fades to the background. How similar are hypnosis and meditation? Both can involve relaxation, both seem to be induced by a shift in attention, but meditation has more reliable physiological correlates: changes in EEG, GSR (galvanic skin response), oxygen consumption, blood lactate levels Just as hypnosis can occur without relaxation, so can meditation: Dummo meditation- Energizing meditation 9/6/07- Hypnosis What is it? 1. Social-psychological approach Sarbin & Coe- role enactment Barber, Spanos- demand characteristics Specific tasks demand some kind of social response, and the hypnotized individual responds to those demands. 2. "Special processes" approach- Hypnosis is distinct from "normal waking consciousness" Hilgard- Neodissociation theory: In hypnosis, certain cognitive functions or processes that would normally be connected to phenomenal awareness get disconnected. Classic Suggestion Effect- Hypnotized individuals have the experience of involuntariness; they feel as if certain responses happen on their own, outside of conscious control. Difference between the perception that something is involuntary and the reality of it. People do not give up control during hypnosis. Orne- Hypnosis is a psychological state or condition, induced by a ritualistic procedure, in which the subject experiences changes in perception, thinking, memory and behavior in response to suggustions by the hypnotist. Hypnotic induction- This is a little-understood aspect of hypnosis. Relaxation Focusing attention Confusional overload
Stanford Scale- individual follow-up These scales have 12 items, and subjects have to score between 9-12 (passing these many items) to be considered "highly hypnotizable." They have to do it on BOTH scales. Three kinds of items on these scales: 1. Ideomotor items-- To pass these items, you must produce a seemingly involuntary movement as a result of a suggestion: head falling, hand lowering, eye closure, moving hands apart. 2. Challenge items- To pass these items, you must try and fail to produce a movement. arm immobilization--can't lift your arm arm rigidity- can't bend your arm catalepsy- can't open your eyes communication inhibition- can't shake your head "no" anosmia- can't smell something finger lock- can't separate intertwined fingers 3. Cognitive items fly hallucination, age regression, hallucinated voice, negative visual hallucination, posthypnotic suggestion, posthypnotic amnesia Hypnotic Phenomena Trance logic- Example: a hypnotized individual may experience an actual and hallucinated researcher sitting in the same chair. Hidden observer-- Example: cold pressor pain studies in which subjects immersed their arms in cold water and then rated their pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Hypnotized subjects given a suggestion of analgesia (experiencing little or no pain) rate their perceived pain as very low. But when they are told that there is a "hidden observer" inside of them who can rate the intensity of the pain stimuli accurately, their pain ratings match thos of non-hypnotized control subjects. The Stroop effect- Highly hypnotizable individuals have a sharply reduced stroop effect during hypnosis. Visual acuity- Hypnotic suggestion can improve acuity in nearsighted subjects Split in consciousness-- That there may be reversal in terms of which level is dominant. The level of consciousness at which you experience pain may take a back seat if given the right suggestion. Figure-ground reversal in Gestalt psychology What might be happening in hypnosis is that the figure and the ground are temporarily reversing. How does that happen? Through a shift in attention: Three personality traits correlate reliably with hypnotizability: 1) Absorption- The ability to focus completely on one object. 2) Imaginative involvement-- The ability to get drawn into your mental imagery. 3) Effortless experiencing- When ideas and experiences come to you, as if on their own. People who are hypnotizable appear to be able to focus completely on a single task, and if that task involves mental imagery, to get lost in their imaginations. They also have ideas come to them with no perceived psychological effort. Clinical applications: 1. Involuntary disorders: pain, warts, asthma Two ways that hypnosis can be used with pain control: a) analgesia- removing existing pain, such as chronic pain from arthritis, headaches, burn, cancer b) anesthesia- preventing future pain, such as dentistry, major and minor surgery, childbirth 2. Voluntary disorders a) Smoking- 30-40% abstinence rate after three months compared to people going through more conventional psychotherapy alone, who might have a 20% abstinence rate. Motivation to quit is a much more effective predictor of success than hypnotizability. b) Weight loss- Hypnosis doesn't improve the effectiveness of a weight loss program. 9/4/07- Dreams What is a dream? A subjective experience, occurring during sleep, that involves complex, organized mental images and that shows temporal progression or change. Mental imagery- Not just visual imagery, but also some auditory, and to a lesser degree, the other three senses. Temporal progression-- Narrative or storylike structure. The definition shown above does not meantion the following: 1. Any bizarre, dramatic or emotional content of dreams. Not all dreams have that kind of content. 2. The "delusional" quality of dreams: We don't know that they are NOT real. It doesn't account for lucid dreams (dreams in which we are aware that we're dreaming during the dream). It doesn't account for the "delusional" quality of waking. What are dreams like? Demographic data show the following: 1. Sensory qualities 100% of dreamers have visual imagery (68% report color). 94% experience conversations 13% have non-verbal auditory imagery 1% have touch, taste or smell
38% take place in a familiar setting 43% take place in an unfamiliar but ordinary setting 5% have exotic settings (e.g., tropical island) 1% are fantastic (occur in a fantasy setting)
Dreamer is the center actor in 95% of dreams. Other people are present in 90% of dreams Friends or relatives are present 35% of dreams 4. Bizarreness Zero low medium high 60% 27% ------------13%--------
30% have emotional content (awareness of emotion: anger, fear, joy) Sexual content: 1%
Self-reflection: 50% Reasoning: 22% Memory experience: 4% 7. Clarity Medium to high: 80% 8. Coherence- The dream has some kind of sensible sequence of events Medium to high: 97% There is a correlation between perceived time in a dream and actual time. Why do we dream? Freud- wish fulfillment; the id has impulses that are sexual or aggressive in nature. The ego tries to block the gratification of those impulses when they are perceived as a physical or psychological threat to the individual. Some impulses generate anxiety and guilt. The unconscious carries out a process called "dreamwork," in which these impulses are disguised in symbolic form. The "manifest" content of the dream, the actual symbols, setting, characters, etc, really hide the "latent" content, which has to do with the gratification of impulses that are threatening to the individual. Dream content is determined by unconscious and irrational psychological forces. Jung- Dreams allow for the development and expression of neglected parts of our personality. Individuation- the process by which those parts of ourselves that have been hidden become integrated with the parts of ourselves that are more conscious. In our unconscious, there is the "shadow," "anima" or "animus" (in men, the anima is the hidden or suppressed feminine side; in women, the animus is the masculine side). Adler- Dream have a problem-solving function. We work out the details of everyday problems in our dreams. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley- activation-synthesis hypothesis. The CNS has random activity during sleep, and dreams are the the attempt of the cortex to give this activity some meaning. Flying dreams are the result of activation of the vestibular system. Chase dreams might result from activation of the motor cortex. Emotions might be related to autonomic arousal. Criticism: There is NOT a good correlation between dream activity and psychophysiology. Lucid dreaming- Challenges the idea that dreams are determined by either unconscious factors or random ones. Stephen LaBerge developed techniques for inducing lucid dreams At the core is the reality test: First, ask the question, "Am I dreaming?" Then, have some kind of task by which you check to see if you are (light switch, reading) Mnemonic Induc tion of Lucid Dreaming (MILD): 1. Write down your dreams. 2. Replay your dreams, incorporating the recognition that you're dreaming. 3. Autosuggestion: "The next time that I dream, I will recognize that I'm dreaming." NovaDreamer- 65% effective 8/30/07- Announcements 1. The term paper is double-spaced. 2. Class will end early on Sept 20 (~4:15) 3. Happy Labor Day! Sleep- Consciousness expansion that may take place every night. Consciousness expansion means moving from a level of consciousness that involves the mind to one that does not. deep sleep-ineffability The scientific study of sleep has depended on two major breakthroughs in psychophysiology: 1) Loomis, Harvey, & Hobart (1937)- Brain-wave recordings could be used to distinguish among the different stages of sleep. 2) Aserinsky & Kleitman (1953)- Dreaming occurs during periods of rapid eye movement (REM). 5 Stages of sleep, differentiated by EEG activity primarily: EEG activity: beta waves- 14-30 Hz alpha- 8-13 Hz theta- 4-7 Hz delta- 0.5-4 Hz
People deprived of REM sleep tend to feel mentally fatigued, whereas those deprived of NREM sleep tend to feel physically fatigued. The sleeping brain can still detect stimuli in the person's surroundings, which produce evoked potentials and increase heart rate. Arousal thresholds (the level of stimulation that causes awakening) are lower for meaningful stimuli, such as a baby crying for a parent. Why do we sleep? Restorative function-- We sleep to rest. Then, why not just relax for eight hours? Sleep is adaptive because it ensures that animals stay still and quiet so that they won't draw attention from nocturnal predators. So, why not just have SWS? Why do you need to cycle between REM and NREM sleep? Theories to account for the pattern associated with the basic sleep cycle? 1. Memory consolidation theory-- REM sleep deprivation seems to interfere with memory for recently-learned information. Therefore, some theorists conclude that REM promotes consolidation of newly learned memories. Doesn't account for NREM sleep. Why do we need NREM? 2. REM promotes forgetting- Crick & Mitchison (1983) proposed that the function of REM is to promote forgetting by producing random inputs to the brain that wipe out unnecessary or even interfering information. 3. Sleep in general and REM in particular are critical to brain maturation. There is evidence of protein synthesis increases during REM. Infants spend 50% of their sleep period in REM. 4. Hartmann proposed that the function of REM is not just brain growth but also restoration, whereas NREM is associated with physical recuperaton. Two levels of consciousness: Sleep is on opportunity to dissolve old form and shut down the mind for a number of reasons, including creative function. 8/28/07- Announcements: 1. Lecture notes now online: http://vas.web.arizona.edu, click on "358 Lecture Notes." 2. Book Release Party, 4:30pm, U of A Bookstore, Sept 20, "The Chanter's Guide."
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