Cognitive Psychology Lecture Notes (Concsiousness)

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 performance
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!!

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