Assignment:
Review the book:Making up the Mind-How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Chris Frith
1. Read the chapter provided on Moodle by Gazzaniga (2008) on consciousness entitled Is Anybody There? Gazzaniga is a very well-known cognitive neuroscientist and his work on split brain patients is classic research within the discipline of psychology.
a. In a couple of sentences, what is the argument being made by Gazzaniga regarding the nature of consciousness? How does his argument complement the argument being made by Frith? Give a specific example to illustrate your reasoning.
b. Though the two founding schools of thought in psychology, structuralism and functionalism, thought that psychology should be study of human consciousness, consciousness has been an understudied topic in the field for the past century. What is the difference between the structuralists' and the functionalists' view on how to study human consciousness? Do Gazzaniga's ideas concerning consciousness seem more sympathetic to the structuralist approach or the functionalist approach? Explain.
c. Like Frith, Gazzaniga supports his ideas by discussing a number of research studies. Track down the source of one of those studies like you did for the Psychology in the Popular Media assignment. It needs to be a source that you have electronic access to so you can read it.
i. Provide a screen shop of your EBSCO search as well as the Permalink from your literature search. The permalink button is on the right hand column and will provide you with a web address (i.e., the Permalink I am asking for) that I can use to obtain this article myself.
ii. Read the article you found. What was the purpose of the study according to the authors (if there was more than one experiment, I mean the overall purpose)? What did Gazzaniga say the purpose of the study was or did he even mention it?
iii. What did the authors conclude from their study? What did Gazzaniga conclude from the study? Were the conclusions the same or different?
d. Like you did for the Discussion forums, comment on your thoughts concerning the chapter by Gazzaniga. Remember you need to critically reflect on your ideas (or his ideas) so again your opinion, regardless of what it is, isn't worth any marks. We will be grading your analysis of why you are thinking the way you thinking. You should pull in what you have learned so far in the course to help inform your ideas (and show evidence of having done so). We expect approximately 500 words for the answer to this question.