A Map of the Self in Relation to the World

 Consciousness: Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.  In general, if we are actively aware of or thinking about something, we are having a conscious experience. ▪ Examples of conscious processes: ▪ Retrieving memories, having conversations, making decisions, etc.

 However, there are different levels and states of consciousness.  We are not consciously aware of everything going on around us 100% of the time, but our brain is.  Consciousness is but the tip of the information- processing iceberg.  We process a great deal of information outside our awareness.

 Not all researchers agree about what the specific levels are, but some of the possible types offered by researchers are the following:  Conscious level – ▪ The organism’s awareness of, or possibility of knowing, what is happening inside or outside itself.  Nonconscious level – ▪ Devoted to processes completely inaccessible to conscious awareness.  Preconscious level – ▪ Outside of awareness but contains feelings and memories that you can easily bring into conscious awareness.  Subconscious level – ▪ Consciousness just below our present awareness.  Unconscious level – ▪ A deeper level of awareness that contains thoughts or desires about which we have no direct knowledge.

 The information about yourself and your environment you are currently aware of.  Your conscious level right now is probably focusing on these words and their meanings.

 Body processes controlled by your mind that we are not usually (or ever) aware of.  Right now, your nonconscious is controlling your heartbeat, respiration, digestion, and so on.

 Information about yourself or your environment that you are not currently thinking about (not in your conscious level) but you could be.  If I asked you to remember your favorite toy as a child, you could bring that preconscious memory into your conscious level.  If I asked you to remember how you felt when your pet died, you could bring that into your conscious awareness very easily.

 Information that we are not consciously aware of but we know must exist due to behavior.  The behaviors demonstrated in examples of priming and the mere-exposure effect (we prefer stimuli we have seen before over novel stimuli, even if we do not consciously remember seeing the old stimuli) suggest some information is accessible to this level of consciousness but not to our conscious level.

 Other examples:  Subliminal (subconscious) messages/advertising – if a “forbidden” word is flashed on a screen in front of people very rapidly and then removed, the people’s brains will respond electrically even if they claim they didn’t see the word.  Driving – our hands and feet do the driving while our mind is elsewhere. ▪ We drive home automatically without thinking of the directions to get there.

 The principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious and unconscious tracks.  Ex: tapping your foot to the music that’s on in the background while studying for a test  The experience of déjà vu is not completely understood, but one of the common theories for explaining it is the “dual processing” theory.  Guided Reading: there-done there-done