Psychology of Consciousness

Guidelines for Project Reports for the Psychology of Consciousness

The main purpose of the projects for Psychology of Consciousness is to have you examine your conscious experiences under a variety of conditions and settings. To some extent, then, it is important that you simply have the experiences that accompany your carrying out any given project.

In addition, however, I would like you to practice inspecting your conscious experience in a critical, analytic, and systematic way. Consequently, you must prepare a report for each project that includes a description of the experience and your reflections on the characteristics of your conscious awareness of the experience.

Each report should be 3-4 pages long, typed and double-spaced. It should describe what you did, when you did it, how you did it, and the context in which it was done. The report should also summarize your reflections on how the experience affected your consciousness. Use the following guidelines to structure your reflections:

1. How was your awareness of what was going on around you altered? Was your awareness heightened, diminished, or unchanged?

2. Were you more conscious of events and objects in the external environment (sights, sounds, smells, etc.) or were you more conscious of internal states (feelings, bodily sensations, etc.)? What kinds of sensations were you most aware of?

3. What were any emotional components like? Were they strong or weak, positive or negative?

4. Did you feel as though your attention was more focused or less focused than usual? Was there any indication that you were more (or less) focused than usual?

5. Were you aware of any internal commentary about the events and/or your experiences of them? Did you feel as though you were aware of your awareness?

6. Did your sense of time change? If so, did time seem to speed up or slow down?

7. Did your sense of space change? If so, did space seem to expand or to contract, or was it distorted in other ways?

8. Did your sense of self change? If so, did your sense of self become more sharply defined or more expansive?

9. Did the nature of your conscious awareness change as the experience continued?

10. After the experience was over, how long were you still aware of its aftereffects?

11. What kinds of retrieval of the experience have you had? Can you re-experience the event from memory? If so, what is the re-experience like and how does it compare to the original experience?

12. Was there any disruption in your sense of the continuity of your consciousness, either with respect to time (did you lose time?) or with respect to personal integrity (did you lose a sense of connection to part of yourself?)