Cognitive Psychology Class Notes > Consciousness

Automaticity

automatic processing:

• do not require attention
• automatic processes complete themselves without conscious control
• involves parallel processing
• driving a car & listening to the radio
• reading (Stroop task)

controlled processing:

• require attention
• requires conscious control
• driving a car for the first time

a process can be come automatic through extensive practice:

• learning to walk
• learning to drive
• Underwood (1974) - case study of Neville Moray (shadowing expert)

Consciousness

• awareness we have of the outside world and of our perceptions, images, and feelings (Matlin)

Consciousness and Cognition

• often assessed with verbal reports (Ericsson & Simon, 1993)
• but, not always complete (e.g. cannot verbalize process of pattern recognition)

Automaticity and Thought Suppression

• thought suppression:

• making a conscious effort to avoid a particular thought
• requires one to:

• plan to supress a thought
• carry out that plan by suppressing all manifestations of the thought, including the original plan

• therefore, thought suppression seems to involve a state of knowing and not knowing at the same time

• Wegner, Schneider, Carter, and White (1987)

---------- EXAMPLE -----------------

Don't think of a white bear.

In the next five minutes, please verbalize your thoughts as you did before, with one exception. This time, try not to think of a white bear. Every time you say "white bear" or have "white bear" come to mind, though, please ring the bell on the table before you.

Results:

• white bear mentions and bell rings almost always occurred when the subject finished a sentence and was silent

Theoretical Conclusions:

• controlled effort to not think of a white bear
• automatic search for signs of a white bear
• thought suppression is difficult to do and is time consuming
• even when thoughts are supressed, they may return to consciousness with minimum prompting, perhaps to the point of obsessive preoccupations

Practical Applicatons:

• suppression of thought may lead to obsessive thinking over time
• smoking, dieting, obsessive-compulsive disorder

Subliminal Perception

• automatic, unconscious processing of information that has some impact on subsequent behavior

• searching for sex in ice cubes

• information exposed for brief periods or among a lot of "noise" so that focused attention cannot process it completely
• satanic messages in rock music & top-down processing**

Vokey and Read (1985)

• tested listeners' ability to identify the meaning of backward statements ("backward masking")
• each statement fit one of 5 categories: nursery rhymes, Christian, satanic, pornographic, or advertising
• Ss had to identify the category (chance = 20%)
• listeners performed at chance levels (19%)

indicated that they had not analyzed the meaning of backward speech and little if any information is analyzed and stored in a way that it can be explicitly recalled or recognized

• BUT... it may affect our emotional responses despite our inability to explicitly remember the meaning of it

• unconsciously perceived stimuli and affective reactions

Murphy and Zajonc (1993)

• Ss told to rate Chinese ideographs as "good" or "bad" concepts
• BUT... before each ideograph was presented it was preceded by a face
• Ss were presented with smiling faces and scowling faces
• in one group, faces were presented for 4 ms (below level of awareness)
• in another group, faces were presented for 1000 ms (well above the level of awareness) -- Ss were told to ignore faces

Results:

• only the unconsciously perceived faces influenced ratings of the ideographs
• when Ss in the 4 ms group "saw" smiling faces --> "good" concept
• when Ss in the 4 ms group "saw" scowling faces --> "bad" concept
• no difference between types of faces for the 1000 ms group

Conclusions:

• Ss were able to ignore faces and not let them influence their ratings --> controlled processing
• unconsciously perceived faces influenced ratings --> automatic processing

General Conclusions about Consciousness

• not necessary to be aware of incoming information for it to affect our performanc
• automatic processing (unlike controlled processing) of information is often related to a lack of conscious awareness
• automatic processing (unlike controlled) of information is often not detected in verbal reports
• we will see more about consciousness in higher level cognitive processing!!