Chapter 3- Conciousness and the Two Track Mind

This was another easy-to-read chapter. It caught my interest right away with describing the different states of conciousness, such as spontaneously occuring, physiologically induced, and psychologically induced. It was useful to learn about each state so because we have the potential to experience every one! We have all felt drowsy, daydreamt, and had dreams in our sleep (spontaneous), some of us may have experienced hallucinations, orgasms, or extreme starvation (physiological), and maybe some of us have even had the opportunity to be hypnotized at a school event, volunteered in a sensory deprivation expericment, or taken some extra time to meditate (psychological).

Dual processing was another interesting topic that I previously didn't completely understand. It indirectly explained how we "know more than we know we know." A perfect example of this is the fact that most of our everyday thinking, feeling, and acting happens outside of our concious awareness. This is a hard concept to process, but basically, we just have to give the credit to our minds. An example the book gave was how a woman who was blinded was still able to place an evelope in a narrow mail-space even without seeing it. This example shows that our mind can percieve things our eyes may not be able to.

An idea I found surprising was inattentional blindness, or failing to see visible objects because our attention is directed elsewhere. This is true in many circumstances. Things may happen right before our eyes without us even seeing them because we are so intensely focused on our activity at hand. Change blindness is a concept much like inattentional blindness. In change blindness, one fails to notice changes in the environment (example: someone in a crowd of a few people may be wearing a green t-shirt, and after a brief visual iterruption they may change to a red t-shirt without you noticing because you are focused on someone else in the group). A common phrase used for this is "out of sight, out of mind."

When I learned about the importance of sleep and what it does for the brain, I really reconsidered my bedtime/waking habits. I think from now on I will do what it takes to get better amounts of sleep in order to keep a healthy, stress-free mind. I am excited to see the outcome of our sleep experiment for class; I want to know what I need to change and what my dreams mean in relevance to my life.

Last year our school hired a hypnotist or an afternoon assembly and I found it incredibly funny to watch some of my friends make fools out of themselves without knowing it. After reading the chapter, I learned that, while they may not have remembered doing all the things they were asked to do by the hypnotist, their subconcious was taking care of them and knew what they were doing (dual processing, once again!).

I agree with what the book had to say about tolerance and withdrawal from an addictive substance. I can support this belief because I have family member who is addicted to alcohol and I have been able to watch this disease progress. With time, more and more alcohol was needed to get to the "happy place" where there were no worries, or to the point where this person could fall into VERY deep sleep. When certain circumstances didn't allow for alcohol, I witnessed this person experiencing withdrawal symptoms which were unpleasant to watch, and, I would imagine, even more unpleasant to experience. I also believe that the book is correct with the three main influences on drug use. Many people object that addictions, like those to alcohol, are not bilogical, but I agree with the book that they most certainly are. The family member I have who is addicted also had an addict father. I also agree that psychological and social-cultural influences also play a major role. Who you are around the most, what they do, and how they make you feel all influence how you percieve usage of drugs. It is sad that becoming a user could be this simple, but it is the truth. I think it's very important for kids to have positive influences at school and for adolescents to be well-informed of drugs and their consequences before age 14.