Consciousness and its nature has been discussed in different sciences for many years. In psychology consciousness is usually defined as individual awareness of senses, thoughts, feelings, memories and stimuli of environment. "Perception, memory, thinking, language, and attitudes all operate on two levels—a conscious, deliberate “high road” and an unconscious, automatic “low road.” (Myers, 2010, p.87). This phenomenon is called dual processing.
Selective attention is the process of focusing on a certain stimulus of environment for some period of time. Usually it is the object which is important for an individual at some certain moment. There is a limited amount of information one can consciously attend at once, while our unconscious track is working with 10,999,960 bits. Here is an example of selective attention: a person can be at some noisy place with background music but music does not attract his attention until he hears his favourite song.
Speaking of selective inattention it is described as ignoring unimportant, threatening or anxiety-provoking stmuli, though they can be both physical or emotional. Scientists have underlined several types of selective inattention such as inattentional blindness, change blindness or change deafness, choice blindness etc. A 5 year old child is watching TV, his mother is calling him but he ignores her voice because his attention is focused on one object which is the most interesting for him; this child does not want to be interrupted.
It is known that even during deep sleep we still percieve different stimuli including hearing noises and other senses. Sleep is vital for health and it is a basic human need along with eating, breathing and drinking. People are considered to be sleep-deprived when they sleep not enough. Disrupption of the sleep cycle can lead to disturbances in mental and physical health.Observations has shown that sleep deprivation is characterized by disturbances in postural control, lower immunity and increase in muscle tonus, which is " is accompanied by tremor whose amplitude usually increases under conditions of fatigue" (Orzel, 2010, p.99). Then, loss of sleep has influence on the image formation, for example doubleness or obscurity of the vision. Speaking of cognitive processes, it is notable that sleep deprivation causes decrease of concentration, inattention, and, consequntly, decrease of work effectiveness. Experiments with animal involvment has shown the loss of weight during sleep disrupption though they ate more food rich in proteins and calories. Accordig to Orzel (2010), "a number of data confirm memory impairments due to sleep deprivation, particularly if the deprivation covers a specific time window." These and other consequences are often underestimated when talking about sleep, though it affects all asoects of human life.
References
Myers, D. G. (2014). Exploring psychology in modules with updates on DSM-5 (9th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers. 85-101.
Orzeł-Gryglewska J. (2010). Consequences of Sleep Deprivation. International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health 2010; 23(1):95–114.
