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Consciousness refers to your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations and environment. Your conscious experiences are constantly shifting and changing. For example, in one moment you may be focused on reading this article. Your consciousness may then shift to the memory of a conversation you had earlier with a co-worker. Next, you might notice how uncomfortable your chair is or maybe you are mentally planning dinner. This ever-shifting stream of thoughts can change dramatically from one moment to the next, but your experience of it seems smooth and effortless. .

Structuralists used a process known as introspection to analyze and report conscious sensations, thoughts, and experiences. American psychologist William James compared consciousness to a stream; unbroken and continuous despite constant shifts and changes. While the focus of much of the research in psychology shifted to purely observable behaviours during the first half of the twentieth century, research on human consciousness has grown tremendously since the 1950s.

Tags: Consciousness

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Rehabilitation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.