Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

BECOMING AN INFORMED 
CONSUMER 
of Psychology
Sleeping Better
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“When I can’t sleep, I fi nd that it sometimes helps to get up and jot down my anxieties.”
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R E C A P / E V A L U A T E / R E T H I N K
K E Y T E R M S
R E C A P
What are the different states of consciousness?
• Consciousness is a person’s awareness of the sensations, 
thoughts, and feelings at a given moment. Waking 
consciousness can vary from more active to more passive 
states. (p. 140)
• Altered states of consciousness include naturally 
occurring sleep and dreaming, as well as hypnotic and 
drug-induced states. (p. 140) 
What happens when we sleep, and what are the meaning and 
function of dreams?
• The brain is active throughout the night, and sleep 
proceeds through a series of stages identifi ed by unique 
patterns of brain waves. (p. 142)
• REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is characterized by an 
increase in heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, an 
increase in the rate of breathing, and, in males, erections. 
Dreams most often occur during this stage. (p. 143)
• According to Freud’s psychoanalytic approach, dreams 
have both a manifest content (an apparent story line) and a 
latent content (a true meaning). He suggested that the la-
tent content provides a guide to a dreamer’s unconscious, 
revealing unfulfi lled wishes or desires. (p. 147)
• The dreams-for-survival theory, grounded in an 
evolutionary perspective, suggests that information 
relevant to daily survival is reconsidered and repro-
cessed in dreams. Taking a neuroscience approach, the 
activation-synthesis theory proposes that dreams are a 
result of random electrical energy that stimulates 
different memories, which then are woven into a 
coherent story line. (p. 148) 
What are the major sleep disorders, and how can they be 
treated?
• Insomnia is a sleep disorder characterized by diffi culty 
sleeping. Sleep apnea is a condition in which people 
have diffi culty sleeping and breathing at the same time. 
People with narcolepsy have an uncontrollable urge to 
sleep. Sleepwalking and sleeptalking are relatively 
harmless.(p. 149) 
How much do we daydream?
• Wide individual differences exist in the amount of time 
devoted to daydreaming. Almost everyone daydreams 
or fantasizes to some degree. (p. 151)