Conscious Thought,

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Chapter 14

• Conscious Thought,
• Unconscious Thought

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Conscious vs. Unconscious Processes
We have been talking about many of the mental
processes assumed to underlie our behaviour in a
variety of contexts. Although we have not
emphasized this point previously, one
very controversial issue - the issue that is the
focus of this chapter - is the possibility of
these processes falling into two general types
conscious processes and unconscious
processes. Is there such a distinction? If so,
how are conscious processes different from
unconscious processes? What is the purpose
of conscious processes? How do you know whether
performance in some context is reflection
conscious or unconscious processes.
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A Brief History of Consciousness
In its earliest years, the study of Psychology
was focused completely on understanding
conscious thought processes. The primary
psychological technique for many years was the
technique of introspection which involves the
monitoring and reporting of the contents of
consciousness. However, as Psychology struggled
for scientific credibility, it rejected the use
of introspection and, with it, the direct study
of conscious processes. Why? Whats wrong with
introspection? Lets try it, then discuss it in
more detail. Introspect on ...
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Problems with Introspection
Sincerity of Introspection - Subjects often like
to edit their thoughts prior to report either
to remain respectable, or to look good. Accuracy
of Introspection - When introspecting about a
past event, all the errors associated with
long-term memory could effect ones report when
introspecting about a current event, short-term
memory limitations could cause problems as out
thoughts keep moving. Quick thoughts - some
forms of thinking may occur too quickly to be
analyzed via introspection 4x8? Verbal nature
of report - not all thoughts are verbal things
may get lost in the translation to a verbal code
also may be confusion over what terms to use
e.g., what is a vivid image?
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Introspections May Be False
Perhaps more important that any of the other
reasons, it seems that introspective reports may
be completely false. The introspective reports
provided by subjects often completely miss
factors that clearly are important to their
behaviour, and instead often include things that
have nothing to do with the true causes of their
behaviour. gt Nisbett Wilson (1977) study -
sock experiment gt Split brain studies Are our
introspections merely our after the fact
interpretations of our behaviour as opposed to a
window to the relevant processes?
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Back to the Past
Given the problems with introspection, it was
viewed as unscientific and therefore its use
declined. Freuds discussion of conscious versus
unconscious influences was also viewed by many
psychologists and a very unscientific trend that
could be the ruin of psychology. The
behaviourist approach became very dominant in
North America, an approach that strongly
emphasized behaviour, and largely
banished research on such flaky cognitive issues
such as conscious or unconscious processes
instead, psychologists were encouraged to focus
on what could be manipulated and measured
stimuli and responses.
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The Reincarnation of Interest
In a funny twist, interest in the possible
distinction between conscious and unconscious
influences was re-kindled by the claims of a
marketing executive. This is the famous popcorn
experiment (which may never have really
occurred) in which the word Popcorn was
presented to movie goers during a movie and
without their awareness. The claim was that this
subliminal presentation of the word popcorn
was perceived unconsciously, where it motivated
hunger all without the awareness of the person
who became hungry. Does this kind of thing
really happen?
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Subliminal Perception
Can humans be influenced by things they claim not
to be aware of? Definitely, there are a number
of examples including gt Sidis (1898) card
trick gt The neurological condition termed
blindsight gt Amnesia as memory without
awareness However, from a scientific standpoint,
the implications of these data have been
controversial because of the reliance on
self-report. gt Do the subjects really
understand what awareness means? gt Would their
definition of awareness match ours? What do we
learn about consciousness?
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Oppositional Effects
Given these dissatisfactions with the general
technique of subliminal perception, researchers
interested in documenting and understanding the
distinction between conscious and unconscious
influences have begun to use a new technique that
focuses on contexts where conscious and
unconscious influences are having oppositional
effects. The common example of these contexts is
something termed capture errors some
examples gt Driving a familiar route when you
want something different. gt Steves garage key
example. gt Putting the cereal in the
fridge. These are all situations where some
automatic tendency runs counter to ones current
goals or needs.
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Bringing Capture Errors Into the Lab
If we could produce these capture errors in the
lab we could perhaps use them to better document
and understand the interplay between conscious
and unconscious influences. Thus, the goal would
be to create a context where unconscious influence
s are exerting an influence that runs counter to
the current goals of the subject (which, we
assume, are the realm of conscious influences). T
hen, we need to try to vary the awareness of the
subject of some critical information when
awareness is low, they should behave in accord
with the unconscious influences when awareness
is high, they should behave in accord with
conscious influences.
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Merikle Joordens (1997)

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Merikle Joordens (1997)
SPICE
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Merikle Joordens (1997)

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Merikle Joordens (1997)
SPI__
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Logic
So, in this situation Unconscious influences
(i.e., priming) should be biasing the subjects
to use the presented word as their completion
because it should be the first word that comes
to mind. In contrast, conscious influences
should be biasing subjects not to use the
presented word given that they were
instructed not to use it. So, if we vary the
extent to which subjects are aware of the
critical items, what should happen?
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Merikle Joordens (1997a)
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Conclusions?
The fact that subjects do comply with the
instructions at the 200 ms duration suggests that
they do indeed understand the instructions, and
that they are trying to comply with them (and
succeeding when the target is presented long
enough). However, at the brief exposures, they
actually use the targets as completions at above
chance levels DESPITE the instructions to avoid
using them these capture errors provide strong
evidence for the existence of unconscious
influences. From here is would now be nice to do
further studies to understand how this interplay
between conscious and unconscious influences is
related to other cognitive processes such as
attention ...
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Merikle Joordens (1997b)
Full Attention Duration Varied
Long Duration Attention Varied
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Interim Summary
The previous discussion was meant to give you a
feel for the way in which investigators are
currently investigating conscious and
unconscious influences in the lab. A complete
discussion of all this is available in Steves
PsyD58 course if you are interested. For now,
though, we are going to leave the experiments
aside and move to a discussion of the current
view of conscious and unconscious influences
from a cognitive perspective. As youll see,
these views are very different than the
clinical perspective which many view as
Psychologys view.
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Unconscious Cognition vs. Freud
The Freudian View - The unconscious is the
storehouse of all our primitive wants sex,
agression, etc Unconscious influences push us
to acquire these wants, but this needs to be done
in a way that does not violate our morals and
such (the domain of consciousness) thus, there
is a constant battle between conscious and
unconscious influences. The cognitive view -
Unconscious influences simply reflect habits or
automatic responses to stimuli. These automatic
responses can run counter to conscious
intentions, but not in the devilish way implied
by the Freudian theory. The issue is more one of
a battle between responding to some stimulus as
you always have before (unconscious influences)
versus responding to it in a manner consistent
with your current goals (conscious influences).
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The Role of Consciousness
So, if learning leads to unconscious influences
that allow us to efficiently deal with stimuli
what do we have consciousness for? What do we do
with novel stimuli stimuli where we have had
no previous learning? We must come up with some
way of responding to them consciousness? In
other situations, the stimulus-to-response
mapping might not be constant that is, we may
not always want to respond the same way to the
same stimulus so how do we come up with a
response? Finally, there are contexts were may
not want to respond to a stimulus in the
overlearned way thus, something must fight the
overlearned response consciousness?
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Consciousness
Given these notions, the general idea is that it
could be beneficial to have some mechanism that
could generate a response to a stimulus in some
manner that (1) Is able to escape the
influences of previous learning (or the
lack thereof), (2) Is able to take into account
current goal states, and (3) Is flexible enough
to generate different responses in slightly
different contexts. What sort of mechanism
might fit this bill?
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Steves Grandiose Idea
An idea of been thinking about a lot lately is
the notion of that consciousness may reflect the
workings of a mental reality simulator. gt
Flight simulator analogy This reality simulator
would be capable of recreating past
experiences (conscious memory) and of
simulating future experiences (planning). In
could also be used to enhance learning in a new
context by narrowing down what appropriate
responses are likely to be and by allowing
certain responses to count as more during the
learning episode. and it could explain
guilt, worry, anticipation, fear, happiness ...
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Chapter Summary
So, the general idea is that our cognitions do
indeed appear to fall into one of two
classes Unconscious influences reflect past
learning and are likely the bases of all our
basic software used for things like object
recognition, memory retrieval, motor behaviour
etc Conscious influences arise when we have no
suitable unconscious influence available to
generate a response for us they are viewed as
much more flexible, but generally less
efficient. Details of exactly how these
influences arise (especially conscious influences)
and how they interact is now the subject of
renewed interest and research.