consciousness what’s it all about?. inattentional blindness linking perception and attention what...
TRANSCRIPT
Inattentional Blindness
Linking perception and attention What (if anything) do we perceive w/o attention?
Mack & Rock (1998) Participants engaged in another task have an element added at
one point Example: judge which line is longer, but add a critical stimulus on
a later trial. After critical trial participants are asked if they noticed anything unusual (very quick experiment)
+ +.
Change blindness
Outside world as an external memory to be probed by our senses (O’Regan)
Just like certain memories are not readily available unless ‘looked’ for, elements of the environment may not be perceived without attention How would you check whether you were seeing
all elements in a scene? By attending to them
Although it seems as if we are perceiving the world as is, we are only getting info which is attended to The refrigerator light is always on
Such findings from CB and IB suggest there is no conscious perception without attention There is no sound from the tree falling, if no one is
around to attend to it!
We have looked at the problem of how much info gets through, and know that even without conscious focusing of attention we do in fact perceive and are influenced by information in the environment Recall Mackay and Sternberg studies
Shift focus Of what are we aware?
Perception, Attention and Awareness are intimately related to one another
What does it mean to be aware of something? What is consciousness?
“Its meaning we know so long as no one asks us to define it” (James)
Consciousness
Broad definition: Awareness of both environmental and cognitive stimuli Sensations, thoughts, memories etc.
Minds, Brains, and Consciousness Brain: bunch of goo in our noggins Mind: the sum of brain functioning of the
brain, i.e. what the brain does Consciousness: ?
The Problem of C
How can it be studied? Can it be? What is its function/purpose? Is it unitary? What do we know? What do we not know?
Properties of Consciousness
James starts us off by giving four characteristics of consciousness
Subjective “Every 'state' tends to be part of a personal consciousness.”
Changing “Within each personal consciousness states are always
changing.” Continuous
“Each personal consciousness is sensibly continuous.” Purposeful
“It is interested in some parts of its object to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects -- chooses from among them, in a word -- all the while.”
Properties of Consciousness
Emergent Like the liquidity of water or solidity of objects Not a property that the parts of the system which
create it possess, nor just the sum total of the parts
Irreducible? Some (e.g. Searle) claim that the subjective
nature of C leads to the distinction that it is not able to be reduced to the parts that cause it
The ‘hard’ problem of subjectivity Third-person data
Wakefulness Perceptual discrimination Integrated control Access & self-monitoring Verbal Reports Focused attention
Data re underlying brain processes
“The easy problems”
First-person data Visual experiences e.g.
color, depth, … Other sensory experiences e.g.
sound, taste, … Bodily sensations e.g.
pain, orgasm, … Mental imagery e.g.
recalled visual images, … Emotional experiences
e.g. happiness, anger, … Stream of occurrent thought e.g.
reflection, decision, …
All are states of subjective experience: there is something it is like to have these states.
The “hard problem”.
Example: Musical Processing
Third-person data Sound wave patterns Processes in auditory cortex Behavioral reactions Verbal reports (actual and potential)
First-person data Musical experience
Related: qualia Properties of objects related to the subjective experience of the object (the
redness of red)
Hard Problem
What is it like to be a bat? Nagel, Chalmers and other philosophers suggest in
varying degrees that subjective experience is not reducible, and yet is necessary for a complete account of consciousness
However, does this keep us from even attempting to study Consciousness? Can we construct a theory of C without including what it is
like to have C?
The irreducibility of C
Considerations Does your heart pump blood differently (in kind) than does mine?
Subjective experience is assumed to be at least correlated w/ brain functioning, if our brains are similar one would think our personal experiences are similar though colored by our own history (e.g. your ‘redness of red’ is similar to mine [similar eyes, visual cortices] but will call on different memories, emotions, thoughts etc.)
This would at least allow for the possibility of study/comparison/ generalization
Private experiences can be expressed publicly Now a means for at least some inference is available, verbal report
should have some correlation with subjective experience
So in a sense we do have indirect access to the personal from which insights might be gained Much like electrons, planets in other solar systems etc., we can ‘observe’
the personal indirectly
The irreducibility of C
On the other hand.. How well can we even know our private experience?
The psychological uncertainty principle Observing the contents of consciousness necessarily change that
experience Subjective experience is unable to be verified
PUP Verbal report wouldn’t be completely accurate (our own understanding of the
workings of the mind can be incorrect) No 1 to 1 mapping of verbal report to experience
So on the one hand we have (indirect) access to subjective experience but it is problematic
Suggestion: Construct a theory of consciousness that will allow for evaluation and
testable predictions (like we do with everything else in science)
Properties of Consciousness
Variable States of C Vs. UnC
Serial and limited capacity We can only be conscious of one thing at a time
(which we are attending to) There are a great many things that we are not
conscious of
Properties of Consciousness
Widespread Access In spite of limitations, consciousness has access to wide
variety of knowledge, skills and actions Can influence activation of UnC content and even
physiological functioning (biofeedback) Constructive?
Are UnC states simply in waiting, biding their time until the ‘threshold’ of C is reached?
Or is C some sort of construction of pre-C structures to deal with the present environmental situation? Activated schemas are not themselves C, but contribute to the
C experience
Active, analytic consciousness on a continuum of degrees of consciousness Focal awareness (the focus of attention)
Reflective Primary
Peripheral awareness accessible by a shift of attention
Unconsciousness Subconscious (accessible to conscious awareness) Nonconscious (not accessible)
Levels of Consciousness
Subconscious Not in awareness Not necessarily retrievable into awareness by will Influences current processing
Nonconscious Not in awareness Not retrievable by will Not necessarily influencing current processing
Perhaps better(?) distinction: C and Not-C
Unconsciousness
On the Relation between Conscious and Unconscious
Freud’s View Active repression of unconscious Conscious distortion
Cognitive View Lack of activation, not active repression No special distortion
Activation threshold
Activation of UnC content reaches threshold and becomes conscious
Problems Redundancy effect: repeated and predictable
stimulation can lead to UnC processing Automaticity
Goes against idea of C as a construction
Novelty
Novelty Change in the environment (dishabituation) Disconfirmation of expectation (surprise) Violation of skilled routines (interruptions in the flow of
action Consciousness functions to direct attention to
maximize adaptation to novel and significant events Like the activation threshold metaphor, does speak
to a function of C, but doesn’t allow for a complete picture
Spotlight
Bringing things into focus (thoughts, objects in the environment), the selective nature of consciousness
Questions remain: How is the focus determined?
Why this content and not others? Once it is selected, what happens to the info?
Is there further processing (e.g. semantic), does it go to motor systems
What does it mean for content to be conscious?
Theater
Whatever is on the conscious stage is available to a large (UnC) audience
Various processes (e.g. executive:director) operate behind the scenes to control how consciousness plays out.
Functions of Consciousness
Choice and selection of action Modification and evaluation of long-term
plans Adaptation to novel events Retrieval from long term memory Construction of storable representations of
current activities and events Reflective, Self-monitoring Troubleshooting/error detection
Functions of Consciousness
Choice and selection of action Can recruit subgoals to organize and carry out action to the
attainment of a primary goal Prioritizes, makes some info more accessible to
consciousness Executive function
Not an executive system but the executive system has access to it, and so UnC processes are affected
Modification and evaluation of long-term plans Alternative actions considered and different outcomes
evaluated
Functions of Consciousness
Adaptation to novel events More novelty more conscious effort needed to
process Retrieval from long term memory
C not necessary for retrieval but can be used to retrieve information necessary to the situation
Construction of storable representations of current activities and events Information stored and retrieved for future
comparisons of present and past
Functions of Consciousness
Reflective, Self-monitoring Through inner speech and imagery we can control
C and UnC functioning Troubleshooting/error detection
Conscious resources may be activated when other processes (often UnC) are interrupted or breakdown
Scientific Approaches to the Study of Consciousness Consciousness as a variable: studies look at
different types of stimulation (C vs. UnC), memory (C vs. UnC), brain damage, wakefulness vs. other states etc. Attention and automaticity Subliminal perception Implicit learning and memory Neuropsych, neurobiolgical
An inferred construct like attention, working memory etc.
Scientific Approaches to the Study of Consciousness Operational definition (from Baars, 2003).
Conscious processes are events that Can be reported and acted upon With verifiable accuracy Under optimal reporting conditions
Little delay between event and report Which are reported as conscious
Contrast with ‘fringe consciousness’ (e.g. familiarity)
Scientific Approaches to the Study of Consciousness An UnConscious event is that in which
Knowledge of its presence can be verified Even if that knowledge is not claimed to be
conscious And it cannot be voluntarily reported, acted on, or
avoided Even under optimal reporting conditions
Distinctions in cognitive psychology Conscious
Mediated Strategic control Limited capacity Voluntary Declarative memory Supraliminal Novel stimuli Wakefulness, dreaming Episodic Explicit cognition Attended stimuli
UnConscious Immediate Automatic No capacity demands Involuntary Procedural Subliminal Routine, predictable Deep sleep, coma Semantic Implicit cognition Unattended input
Return to subjectivity
Philosophers who suggest that science will never solve the problem of subjectivity essentially do not allow for comparisons of subjective states In doing so are not allowing consciousness to be conceived of as
a variable to be studied However the scientific study of C is studying the subjective
nature of consciousness, assuming what a person reports and the findings seen have at least some correlation to what a person experiences Could we possibly assume that it had no correlation whatsoever?
Regardless of the ‘hard problem’, scientific study of consciousness is routinely carried out and knowledge gained
Some findings: Vision
Blindsight People with damage to visual cortex can
nonetheless ‘see’ objects in their environment
Milner and Goodale (1995) suggest that there are two vision systems: visual perception and visuomotor control. Only the former is involved in conscious
awareness. Example:
Patient shown a circle with lines inside will report not seeing anything
Asked to indicate whether the lines are horizontal or not, patient can respond above chance
Some findings: Vision Split-brain patients
Left half doesn’t know what the right is doing Hemispheric Lateralization
Motor control right brain - left side left brain - right side
Visual field right brain - left visual field left brain - right visual field
Lateralization of function Primary language areas on left, in most people
The split brain
Hemispheric coordination by means of the corpus callosum Disconnecting the Hemispheres
Treatment for Epilepsy Commissurotomy
Now they only snip anterior part of the CC
Normal responses under normal conditions or only subtle effects seen
Unusual responses under laboratory controlled conditions If something is displayed to the LVF, the person cannot name (is
not aware of) the object Information from the right hemisphere does not get to the left
The can however reach for the correct object with their left hand
The split brain
So really, only the left side can report being conscious at all At least initially, the right can learn to speak to some extent also,
and is already implicated in aspects of language such as metaphor and humor
So right brain is largely mute, but inability to speak is not the same as lack of consciousness However the language - consciousness-as-we-know-it link is
strong. Perhaps it is language that allows us to get a sense of self…
"When I learned the meaning of 'I' and 'me' and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me". ~Helen Keller
At the very least suggests consciousness-as-awareness is not unitary
Some findings: Vision
Hemineglect Cannot attend to info in half
the visual field Can still make same/different
judgments above chance Can still show priming effects
for stimuli in the neglected hemifield
Some findings: Attention
Mackay (1973) Unattended information is processed for meaningful content,
though this happens subconsiously Schneider & Shiffrin (1977)
Automatic vs. controlled processes Automatic operates independently of subject’s control, and
independent of attention; Does not use up processing resources Findings discussed regarding change blindness and inattentional
blindness suggest attention is a necessary component to consciousness awareness No attention means no awareness However may also suggest that what we think consciousness is
may be way off
Some findings: Memory
Tulving’s (1985) Types of Memory related to Consciousness Anoetic consciousness
Neither awareness of knowledge nor of personal engagement (procecdural)
Remembering how to do things Noetic
Awareness of knowledge based on experience, but without awareness of personal engagement (semantic)
Remembering what it is Autonoetic
Awareness of personal engagement in remembered events and experiences (episodic)
Memory for a specific episode of experience
Some findings: Memory
Schacter et al. (1986) Hippocampal involvement in conscious
recollection of studied words Reber (1989), Shanks & St. John (1994)
Implicit & Explicit learning and memory (or not) Learn materials, skills consciously, the details
may not reach awareness
Some findings: Memory
Retrograde Amnesia Failure to remember events prior to injury Often caused by head trauma
Anterograde Amnesia Failure to remember events experienced after injury
H.M. Korsakoff’s syndrome Selective brain injuries
Priming can be as good for amnesiacs as for controls “Procedural memory” like that in Towers of Hanoi
H.M.
H.M. Surgical removal of hippocampus on both sides of brain to
treat epilepsy Retention of ordinary short-term memory Retention of information from before operation Failure to learn new information Unable to find his way to his new home unless he can see
the location of the house Has normal initial conversations but has no memory of the
meeting if the person leaves and returns Shows learning of mirror-tracing, but has no memory of
doing so
States of Consciousness
Normal Waking State The “stream of consciousness” Daydreaming
Altered States of Consciousness Near Death & Out of Body Experiences Meditation & Sensory Deprivation Hypnosis Sleep Other Induced States
Drugs Activities
States of Consciousness
Anesthesia At what point is Consciousness ‘turned off’? Thalamus (e.g. Alkire, Haier & Fallon, 2000)
Drugs in general produce a wide variety of ‘states of consciousness’, from nicotine to heroin
Activities (sex, running) can also produce changes in brain states and thus conscious states
Sleep and dreams
Dreams Dreams as a form of thinking Mnemonic activation Lucid (LaBerge et al., 1981)
Characteristics Sleep mentation
Thoughts while sleeping Dream qualities
Imagery Temporal progression Narrative coherence
When Dreams Occur
Hypnagogic State Onset of sleep May be characterized by vivid imagery
NREM Sleep 10-40% yield dream reports Often static images or isolated thoughts
REM Sleep 80-90% yield dream reports Usually images in a narrative
Dreams as a Form of Thinking
Dreams are symbolic acts Dreams are based on what we know
Children have simpler dreams than adults (or lack the language to describe the complexity)
Dreams use dissociated pieces of memory and knowledge
Dreams are organized Dreams have realistic features
People are people; objects are real
Diffuse Memory Activation
Dream elements are activated on a haphazard basis, due to residual activation from daytime, passive associations, etc.
In contrast to Freud, elements are not activated by underlying sexual desires
Meditation
Meditation Concentrative meditation
Emphasis on limited attentional focus Mindfulness meditation
Emphasis on heightened attentiveness Common Goal
Break down habitual modes of thinking Lama in the lab (Shambhala Sun, 2003)
Memory test
DogBuildingBridgeCoinShoeMovieLoveDiskYellowGameChairForestThinCowardCarDiamond
How many words do you remember?
Which color was presented?
Fringe of consciousness
Familiarity, tip of the tongue etc. Characteristics: vague, inarticulate, elusive
Menu bar metaphor (Mangan, 2003) Much info available but not currently displayed due to
limited capacity of C Fringe remains on the periphery of what is consciously
attended Tradeoff between the need to articulate detail and the need
to represent the larger context within which it is embedded
Theories of Consciousness
Cognitive Theories As a component of an information processing
system As a process in an information processing
system As a state of activation
Neural Theories As a component of the brain As a process of the brain As a state of activation
Cognitive Theories The Human Information Processing System
based on a computer metaphor the mind as composed of components or modules
Consciousness as a component within the information processing system
Human Information Processing Symbolic Representations/Manipulation Flow of Information Control of Processing Processing Modules
Sensory Register Working Memory Long-term Memory
Elements of Information Processing Sensory Registers Memory
Short-term (active, working) memory Long-term memory
Executive controller attentional focus
Response generator
Sensory registers Large capacity Briefly available
Working memory Verbal, Visual-spatial processing Limited capacity
LTM Associative network Retrieval of stored information by retrieval cues
Executive Control Some part of the system needs to set priorities, select actions,
evaluate outcomes Attentional Focus Planning and Selection of Tasks
Dissociable Interactions and Conscious Experience Schacter (1989) Distinguish processes involved in conscious identification and
recognition from those involved with other types of information (e.g. linguistic, perceptual)
A number of knowledge modules connect to a conscious awareness system, which is itself connected to an executive system
DICE
Consciousness arises in Conscious Awareness System
Most information processing performed by semi-autonomous cognitive modules
Output from modules may provide input to other modules which influence their functioning, yet no conscious awareness of this process
DICE
Engram Transient or enduring changes in the brain resulting from
encoding and experience
Events are recorded by strengthening connections of those neurons involved in the encoding process, with different parts of the brain involved in different kinds of sensory experience (e.g. occipital for vision)
Each memory associated with many neurons being activated at once
DICE Conscious awareness system can activate otherwise dormant
engrams for conscious recall and then voluntary action by means of the executive Assumes independent memory modules and a lack of direct
conscious access to procedural details. Consciousness interacting with separable knowledge modules
transmits the information from modules to the executive Performs no executive function but serves as gateway to the
executive system Conscious experience results from global awareness of
composite output from these cognitive modules entering CAS
Ok as a starting point, but perhaps not so great as an overall theory of consciousness (e.g. explaining limited capacity, attentional control etc.)
Shallice’s Information Processing Model of Consciousness Consciousness as control of action Aspects of Shallice’s model
Modular (as with DICE) Contention scheduling system that selects among a large
set of action and thought schema based on activation/inhibition factors
A supervisory system that processes the output of the contention scheduling system, correcting for novel or surprising situations
A language system to represent the operations of the supervisory or specialist systems
Episodic memory component containing event-specific information
Shallice
C does not reside in any one component, but instead the contents of C correspond to the info flowing between these systems and the rest of the cognitive system
Baars’ Global Workspace
Based on the theater metaphor
C as a global broadcasting system disseminating info throughout the brain.
More well-developed model of C
Global Workspace: Components Experts
Specialized experts from single neurons to networks or systems of neurons
Efficient, and working together and with other networks, suffer little in the way of capacity limitations
Receive global messages and through various interactions and activations can control perceptual processes that may place content in consciousness
Global Workspace: Components Global Workspace
Architecture capable of system-wide integration and dissemination of information
Corresponds to conscious contents Likely neural correlate is the thalamus
Context Powers backstage Structures that constrain conscious content without being
conscious themselves May involve momentary or long-lasting goals Can shape and be shaped by conscious events
Global Workspace
1.Conscious perception enables access to widespread brain sources; unconscious sensory processing is much more specific.
2.Conscious perception, inner speech, and visual imagery enable working memory functions; there is no evidence for unconscious access to working memory.
3.Conscious events enable almost all kinds of learning: episodic and explicit learning, but also implicit and skill learning.
4.Conscious perceptual feedback enables voluntary control over motor functions, and perhaps over any neuronal population and even single neurons.
5.Conscious contents can evoke selective attention. 6.Consciousness enables access to "self" -- executive
interpreters, located in part in the frontal cortex.
Dennett’s critique
The theater cannot be localized No place in the brain where it all comes together
(like Descartes’ pineal gland) Response:
No one really said it had to be in the first place
Further thinking
http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/ASSChtml/kayakflick.gif
The results from such findings as change blindness may suggest a different way of thinking about consciousness
No continuous stream as previously and widely thought?
Blackmore article
Further thinking
During fixation, brain briefly stores the gist of the scene (not the details*) and new info is compared and previous representation updated Leads to feeling of continuity Simons and Levine
No representation stored at all, but instead virtual representations are created of just the object we are paying attention to Nothing else is represented, but we get the impression that
everything is there because a new object can always be made “just in time” whenever we look
Rensink
Further thinking
No internal representations at all because the world is always there to be referred to Seeing is a way of interacting with the world, a kind of
action. What remains between eye movements is not a picture of the world but the information needed for further exploration
O’Regan The underlying theme of these views is that
searching for the neural correlates of the detailed, picture in our heads is fruitless because there is no such picture
Further thinking
“Perhaps the answer here is to admit that there is no stream of conscious experiences on which we act. Instead, at any time a whole lot of different things are going on in our brain at once. None of these things is either “in” or “out” of consciousness but every so often, something happens to create what seems to have been a unified conscious stream; an illusion of richness and continuity” (Blackmore)
It is possible that the experience of consciousness is created the moment we look, and there never was either a conscious self or a stream We can’t ever catch ourselves not being conscious, as soon as we ‘look’ we are The refrigerator light is always on Can’t prove you actually had a dream
So the trick now is not determining how neural firings give rise to consciousness, but instead figuring out how the illusion is created
Philosophical Aside
Mind - Body Problem Monism
Idealism There are only mental things (minds)
Materialism There are only material things (bodies)
Dualism There are both minds and bodies
Questions for Dualism
How are minds and bodies related? interactive substance
Minds and bodies interact with each other psychophysical parallelism
Minds and bodies act in parallel, but do not interact
Cartesian Dualism
Two kinds of substance, mind and matter Mind
Not material substance (Immaterial) Not extended in space
Matter (Body) Physical substance Extended in space
Problems for Descartes
How can non-material mind influence material body? Pineal gland (obviously)
How can mind be localized to body? Why does consciousness vary with variation
in bodily states?
Churchland’s Critique
Dualism is not parsimonious Postulating one kind of thing is simpler than
postulating two kinds of things Dualism is unable to explain the things we
are interested in Understanding perception, memory, and
judgment, as well as physiological states has been made possible in terms of material explanations
Other stances
Emergentism (property dualism) “Mind emerges from brain”
Interactionism Developed by Roger Sperry, who devised the “split brain” procedure If mind “emerges” from the brain at some level of development or
some level of activity, what kind of thing is it? Does mind exert an influence on the body, or is it just another kind of
psychophysical parallelism?
Epiphenomenalism “mind” is caused by brain but has no effects on physical events C as by-product of brain, (zombies!) But… it certainly doesn’t seem that way!
Other stances
‘Cogpsychy’ notions Functionalism
Define mental states and processes in terms of the their causal relations to behavior but stop short of identifying them with their neural realizations
The computational mind “mind is the function of the brain”
Mind is the software; brain is the hardware Dennett Intentional states involve symbolic representations
John Searle’s argument against computational mind mind cannot be computational because a program has only
syntax and no “content”. The Chinese Room analogy
Reductionistic stances
Eliminative materialism Folk psychology is not just off, but wrong All the mental states we take for granted are not there
Identity theory “mind = brain” Denies the existence of non-physical substances Experiences just are brain processes, not merely correlated with
brain processes. Possible problem:
A subjective experience is different from the brain state that is correlated with it E.g., our experience of a dream is not the same thing as the
observation by others of an REM state in our sleep
Other Minds
Does consciousness occur in other entities? Determining if something is conscious
argument from analogy argument from behavior
introspection intelligent behavior self-awareness
argument from theory
Other Minds, cont’d
Origin of consciousness in human development When does a child become conscious?
Origin of consciousness in evolution What animals are conscious? When did hominids become conscious?
Origin of consciousness in functional complexity Can a computer be conscious?