Deck 16: Consciousness

Question 1

Which of the following involves feedback from higher to lower areas and has been linked to conscious awareness?

A) Feedforward sweep
B) Feedback sweep
C) Recalcitrant propagation
D) Cascaded processing
E) Recurrent processing

Answer 1

Recurrent processing

Question 2

Access consciousness is:

A) Refers to the actions associated with consciousness
B) Refers to the feelings associated with consciousness
C) Refers to the experiential characteristics of consciousness
D) Refers to the immediate conscious experience
E) Refers to the functions that can be associated with consciousness

Answer 2

Refers to the functions that can be associated with consciousness

Question 3

Sperling's (1960) research evidence indicated conscious experience is often:

A) Under-report conscious experience
B) Over-report conscious experience
C) Our conscious experience is controlled by current experiences
D) Conscious experience is short-lived
E) Conscious experience is dictated by performance time

Answer 3

Under-report conscious experience

Question 4

Which three brain areas were identified by Dehaene and Changeux (2011) as being particularly important in the conscious experience?

A) Prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex and cingulate
B) Cerebellum, pons and nucleus accumbens
C) Fusiform face area, putamen and medulla
D) Superior colliculus, reticular formation and occipital cortex
E) Hippocampus, pons and reticular formation

Question 5

"I cannot only feel pain and see red, but think to myself, 'Hey, here I am, Steve Pinker, feeling pain and seeing red!'" This is an example of:

A) Higher form of consciousness
B) Lower form of consciousness
C) Conscious attitudes
D) Phenomenal consciousness
E) Self-monitoring

Question 6

Who conducted elaborate EEG work that indicates free will is an illusion by showing brain activity in the motor cortex occurs before the intention to move?

A) George Sperling
B) Adrian Owen
C) Benjamin Libet
D) Daniel Wegner
E) Victor Lamme

Question 7

A primary function of consciousness is:

A) To plan
B) Social communication
C) To access information
D) To exercise global coordination
E) To control

Question 8

Who stated we have only the illusion of conscious or free will?

A) George Sperling
B) Adrian Owen
C) Carl Jung
D) Daniel Wegner
E) Victor Lamme

Question 9

The key finding of Libet et al. (1983) on consciousness and intention was that:

A) Participants were unaware of their conscious intentions
B) No readiness potentials were detected in the brain
C) Readiness potentials in the brain occurred before conscious awareness of an intention
D) Readiness potentials in the brain occurred during conscious awareness of an intention
E) Readiness potentials in the brain occurred after conscious awareness of an intention

Question 10

Block (2012) distinguised between how many forms of consciousness?

A) One
B) Two
C) Three
D) Four
E) Five

Question 11

Phenomenal consciousness is:

A) Refers to the actions associated with consciousness
B) Refers to the feelings associated with consciousness
C) Refers to the experiential characteristics of consciousness
D) Refers to the immediate conscious experience
E) Refers to the functions that can be associated with consciousness

Question 12

Baynes and Gazzaniga (2000) offered evidence that patient VJ was different from all other split-brain patients that they had studied, in that she:

A) Had no damage to the connective tissue across hemispheres
B) Had been split-brained since birth
C) Had right-lateralised language
D) Displayed signs of limited dual consciousness
E) None of these

Question 13

Who regarded the left hemisphere as dominant because language processing is typically centered there, and took the view that split-brain patients have two minds, each with its own consciousness?

A) George Sperling
B) Michael Gazzaniga
C) Benjamin Libet
D) Roger Sperry
E) Victor Lamme

Question 14

The study of the conscious abilities in the right hemisphere of split-brain patients is hampered by:

A) The fact that there is usually extensive damage to this hemisphere
B) The lack of memory abilities in this hemisphere
C) The lack of language abilities in this hemisphere
D) The impossibility of presenting experimental stimuli exclusively to this hemisphere
E) All of the above

Question 15

The vegetative state is defined, behaviourally, by all of the following criteria EXCEPT:

A) No evidence of wakefulness
B) No response to external stimuli that suggests volition
C) No evidence of language comprehension
D) No external evidence of awareness
E) No evidence of language expression

Question 16

Who proposed the global workspace theory?

A) Dehaene and Changeux (2011)
B) Baars (1988)
C) Pinker (1997)
D) Webb and Graziano (2015)
E) Lamme (2018)

Question 17

The question of how physical processes in the brain can give rise to subjective experience was referred to by Chalmers (2007) as:

A) The easy problem
B) The hard problem
C) The binding problem
D) The integration problem
E) The self-problem

Question 18

Split-brain patients typically have severance of the:

A) Frontal cortex
B) Superior temporal sulcu
C) Corpus callosum
D) Pons
E) Anterior cingulate

Question 19

Which of the following statements describes one of the assumptions of global workspace theory?

A) All information processing occurs unconsciously
B) Conscious awareness is associated with synchronised brain activity
C) Attention plays no part in conscious awareness
D) All information processing occurs consciously
E) The global workspace has an unlimited capacity

Question 20

According to Gazzaniga, the interpreter system of consciousness is based in which area of the brain?

A) Hippocampus
B) Broca's area
C) Left hemisphere
D) Temporal lobes
E) Cerebellum

Question 21

Studying neural correlates of consciousness has many problems. Which statement does NOT reflect these issues:

A) It is hard to disentagle which neural activity is associated with conscious awareness and task-related processes
B) Neuroimaging measures may access consciousness more directly than behavioural measures alone
C) It is hard to establish the relationship between a given pattern of neural activity and consciousness
D) Research is limited to neural correlates of visual conscious awareness
E) Little is known about neural processess associated with conscious awareness of past or future events

Question 22

What are the main functions of consciousness?

A) Perceiving the environment
B) Social communication
C) Control
D) Think about events and issues far removed
E) All of the above

Question 23

According to Bor and Seth (2012), there is an important distinction between:

A) Conscious awareness and conscious being
B) Conscious awareness and conscious behaviour
C) Conscious content and conscious level
D) Conscious perception and conscious emotion
E) Conscious experience and conscious awareness

Question 24

In a study by Wegner and Wheatley (1999), two participants were instructed to stop a cursor every 30 s or so and to indicate whether they had consciously intended the cursor to stop where it did. This is an example of a study of:

A) Free will
B) Conscious attention
C) Attentional control
D) Action selection
E) Social perception