Overview & Goals for Ch 4
Overview of Ch 4: Consciousness
Our immediate awareness of mental activity, internal sensations and external stimuli is referred to as consciousness. Consciousness allows us to integrate past, present, and future action. It provides us with a stable sense of self. After completing this module you will be able to appreciate psychology's significant contributions to our understanding of consciousness and altered states of consciousness. This includes sleep, circadian rhythms and drug/ alcohol addiction.
By reading Ch. 4, you'll learn more about consciousness, attention, sleep, circadian rhythms and addiction and how these states influence our well-being and behavior.
After successfully completing this learning module, students will be able to:
Describe the significance of consciousness in the history of psychology.
Explain the role of attention and phenomena such as selective attention and inattentional blindness.
Explain the term dual processing and describe the characteristics of conscious (sequential) and unconscious (parallel) processing and how each may influence behavior.
Describe the cycle of our circadian rhythms, and identify some events that can disrupt this biological clock.
Describe individual differences in sleep duration and the effects of sleep loss (sleep deprivation), noting reasons for why we need sleep.
Describe the most common content of dreams, and compare theoretical perspectives on why we dream.
Describe the nature of drug dependence and addiction.
Explain how depressants and stimulants affect nervous system activity and behavior..
Discuss the biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors that contribute to drug use.
To meet the learning outcomes in this module, students are expected to complete the following:
"Overview & Goals for Ch. 4" by Pam Costa and Steffi Schrepfer, Tacoma Community College Links to an external site., is licensed under CC BY SA 4.0 Links to an external site.