Chapter 13 Review Questions

autonoetic (p. 407)

Meta-consciousness (p. 409)

stimulus onset asynchrony / stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) / SOA (p. 410)

direct measure (p. 412)

dissociation (p. 413)

Chronesthesia is an individual’s subjective experience of time. Tulving considers this trait to be uniquely human in that the evolution of civilization itself would have stagnated if it were not for our ability to plan and act in ways that facilitate the continued existence of later generations. Instead of mandatory adaptation to a changing environment, humans have the ability to change their environment to better suit their needs. (p. 408)

The objective threshold is that level at which a participant detects a target stimulus at a rate no greater than would be expected by chance. The subjective threshold is the level in which a participant reports that they do not perceive the stimulus and is usually a result of degrading the stimulus or presenting it very quickly. (p. 413)

The notion of the grand illusion of perception suggests that our internal representation of the external world is not as rich in detail as we experience it. It claims that we actually have a very fragmented and detail-poor representation of the external world. Change blindness lends credence to this notion in that if our internal representation of the world were rich in detail, then we would be expected to notice when our conversation partner changes identity in mid-conversation. (p. 416)

Backward masking involves presenting a target stimulus that is then covered by a following stimulus that effectively makes it impossible for an observer to consciously perceive the target. However, the target nevertheless has an influence on later processing. Priming refers to the tendency to respond more quickly to stimuli that is related to previously presented stimuli, even without an observer’s conscious awareness. (pp. 410–412)

If a body part is suddenly missing, for example through amputation, the person may continue to feel the missing body part as if it still exists, even when the person is perfectly aware that it is missing. (p. 431)

Schooler’s three levels of consciousness are non-conscious, conscious, and meta-conscious. Non-conscious, or unexperienced, refers to the form of consciousness that we are unaware of but it nonetheless monitors our thoughts and behaviour and can influence them based on our immediate goals. Consciousness means being aware of whatever we are experiencing at a given moment. Meta-consciousness refers to when we focus our consciousness on our own state of mind. (pp. 408–409)

Mack and Rock presented a word on a screen in one of four quadrants defined by a cross and later asked participants to perform a word stem completion task. The participants claimed to have not seen the word that was flashed but they were more likely to complete the word stem with the word that was flashed. In other words, if the word “chair” was presented and the word stem was “cha_ _,” the participants completed the word with “ir” rather than other letters that would also form a word (e.g., “chase,” “chart”). Thus, because they completed the word stems with a word they claimed not to have seen, Mack and Rock concluded that they must have unconsciously processed the word, which led to their behaviour without their conscious awareness. (p. 412)

In the process dissociation procedure, participants are instructed to not respond to words that were previously seen. Words were masked and presented for short (50 ms) and longer durations (500 ms), and then on the screen would appear a word stem which the participant had to complete but not use the word that was previously presented under the masking conditions. This procedure separates conscious processes from unconscious processes because participants can consciously control how they complete the word stem when they are aware of the word that was presented by excluding it as a response. However, when they are not aware of the word that was presented (i.e., when the words were presented for a short duration), they are less likely to exclude the presented word as a response because they unconsciously processed the word and are not aware that it had been presented and so, they are not in conscious control of their behavioural response. (p. 414)

Saccadic suppression occurs when we make an eye movement. Blink suppression occurs when we blink our eyes. When each of these forms of suppression occurs, our visual system suppresses (or stops) the processing of visual information, and to provide us with the sense of a smooth continuous visual experience, our brain fills in this blind period with information that we have perceived before and after the suppression. (pp. 417–418)

A temporal dissociation is a lapse that occurs between meta-consciousness and conscious-ness that results in the lack of conscious awareness. (p. 420)