Unconscious Processes
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Transcript of Unconscious Processes
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Unconscious Processes:Unconscious Processes:BlindsightBlindsight
PSY/BIO250
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Have you ever beenHave you ever beenunconscious?unconscious?
What were the circumstances?
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Do you do thingsDo you do thingsunconsciously?unconsciously?
Using the unconscious in
everyday life
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Autom
atic Processing
Autom
atic Processing
The big red barn vs the red big barn
Procedural knowledge is automatic
Typing
Tying knots
Swinging golf club
Playing violin
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Sublimin
al Perception
Sublimin
al Perception
Classic psychophysics assumes that each
sense has an absolute threshold
Can information be sensed below this
threshold?
Subliminal perception: stimuli below
threshold may detected unconsciously
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Sublimin
al Perception
Sublimin
al Perception --
DataDa
ta
Bruner taboo words have a higher
threshold (must be presented longer for
perception) than do neutral words
Poetzel phenomenon Tachistoscopic
presentations of words below threshold
appear at higher frequency in dreams
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Sublimin
al Perception
Sublimin
al Perception --
DataDa
ta
Tranel & Damasio Studied
prosopagnostics (with inability to
recognize faces of familiar persons)
Generate electrodermal response
(indicating some emotional attachment)when seeing faces of persons they had
previously known but were now unable
to recognize
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Sublimin
al Perception
Sublimin
al Perception --
DataDa
ta
Bennett Nonconscious perception of voicesheard during surgery
Suggestion that anesthetized patients pull their ear. Patients pull ear 6 times more often than controls
during post-operative interview.
BestCould remember conversations from theoperating room
Studies in anesthetized patients
The colonel led his troops. ORThe kernel orcorn popped.
His weight was 200 pounds. ORWait for the
train.
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Sublimin
al Perception
Sublimin
al Perception --
DataDa
ta
Patient asked to spell the word (e.g.,
colonel or kernel)
What is expected result from Beststudy?
Tendency to avoid the spelling used
during surgery
Is this an avoidance of a word associated
with a painful stimulus?
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BlindsightBlindsight Weiskrantz et al., 1974
Patient D.B. had severe headaches
Surgical removal of arteriovenous
malformation in occipital lobe
Produced scotoma: partial loss of vision
in a part of the visual field
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Connections of
visu
al system
Connections of
visu
al system
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D.Bs
Scotom
aD.Bs
Scotom
a
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V
ision test forD.
B.V
ision test forD.
B.
DB denied vision inscotoma
Verified by standardvision tests
DB instructed toguess and point to
target Astonished!
Repeatedly said hesaw nothing at all
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BlindsightBlindsight Is there an explanation?
Is there a separate conscious and
unconscious visual pathway?
Thalamic (subcortical) visual areas
Lateral geniculate
Superior colliculus
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Connections of
visu
al system
Connections of
visu
al system
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Conditioning (learning) inConditioning (learning) in
amnesic patients?amnesic patients? Calparede Could a Korsakoffs patient
remember that she had been pricked by aneedle?
Weiskrantz Measured eyelid conditioning inKorsakoffs patient CS = light+tone
US = air puff
Significant increase in eye closures to the CS However, the patient had no conscious
awareness of the CS+US association
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Do we have an unconscious:Do we have an unconscious:
Perception without awareness?Perception without awareness?
Ifwe have an unconscious
What are the implications for everyday life?
What would happen ifwe did not have an
unconscious?
Are there arguments against having an
unconscious?
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Unconscious Processes:Unconscious Processes:BlindsightBlindsight
PSY/BIO250
