Quantifying Consciousness: An Empirical Approach

Front Cover
Springer Science & Business Media, Nov 11, 2013 - Psychology - 422 pages
This book presents an approach to quantifying consciousness and its various states. It represents over ten years of work in developing, test ing, and researching the use of relatively simple self-report question naires in the retrospective assessment of subjective or phenomenologi cal experience. While the simplicity of the method allows for subjective experience to be reliably and validly assessed across various short stim ulus conditions, the flexibility of the approach allows the cognitive psy chologist, consciousness researcher, and mental health professional to quantify and statistically assess the phenomenological variables associ ated with various stimulus conditions, altered-state induction tech niques, and clinical procedures. The methodology allows the cognitive psychologist and mental health professional to comprehensively quantify the structures and pat terns of subjective experience dealing with imagery, attention, affect, volitional control, internal dialogue, and so forth to determine how these phenomenological structures might covary during such stimulus conditions as free association, a sexual fantasy, creative problem solving, or a panic attack. It allows for various phenomenological pro cesses to be reported, quantified, and statistically assessed in a rather comprehensive fashion that should help shed greater understanding on the nature of mind or consciousness.

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Contents

Introduction
1
Historical
11
Phenomenological Perspectives on Consciousness
31
The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology
53
Consciousness
60
Consciousness and the Unconscious
68
Development Reliability and Validity of
91
41
98
Rationale for the Use of Retrospective Phenomenological
208
Retrospective Phenomenological Assessment
215
StimulusState Specificity
225
A Note on Methodology as to Fundamental Structures
233
Conclusions
242
The Trait of Absorption and Subjective Experience
245
From Classical to Contemporary Introspection
256
Using the PCI to Investigate TraitState Aspects
259

Reliability
99
11
100
51
104
Development Reliability and Validity of
113
19
120
Introduction
127
Development Reliability and Validity of the Dimensions
145
12222
152
Study 2
159
Graphing Devices for the Retrospective Phenomenological
171
Icons
192
Using Retrospective Phenomenological Assessment
205
Study 2
268
Study 3
279
The Differential Organization of the Structures
289
Study 2
302
Predicting Hypnotic Susceptibility with the PCI
309
Assessing an OutoftheBody Experience with the
333
Discussion
340
Appendixes
351
B DAQ Items as a Function of DAQ Dimensions Using
357
References
395
About the Author
411
Copyright

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