Noradrenergic activity as a key target in modulating consciousness.

Implicit learning (IL) occurs unconsciously and without intention. Perceptual fluency is the ease of processing elicited by previous exposure to a stimulus. It has been assumed that perceptual fluency is associated with IL. However, the role of perceptual fluency following IL has not been investigated in temporal pattern learning. Two experiments by Schultz, Stevens, Keller, and Tillmann demonstrated the IL of auditory temporal patterns using a serial reaction-time task and a generation task based on the process dissociation procedure. The generation task demonstrated that learning was implicit in both experiments via motor fluency, that is, the inability to suppress learned information. With the aim to disentangle conscious and unconscious processes, we analyze unreported recognition data associated with the Schultz et al. experiments using the sequence identification measurement model. The model assumes that perceptual fluency reflects unconscious processes and IL. For Experiment 1, the model indicated that conscious and unconscious processes contributed to recognition of temporal patterns, but that unconscious processes had a greater influence on recognition than conscious processes. In the model implementation of Experiment 2, there was equal contribution of conscious and unconscious processes in the recognition of temporal patterns. As Schultz et al. demonstrated IL in both experiments using a generation task, and the conditions reported here in Experiments 1 and 2 were identical, two explanations are offered for the discrepancy in model and behavioral results based on the two tasks: 1) perceptual fluency may not be necessary to infer IL, or 2) conscious control over implicitly learned information may vary as a function of perceptual fluency and motor fluency.

The role of conscious and unconscious processes in second language learning is one of the problems under dispute in applied linguistics. Richard Schmidt argues, in his article: The Role of Consciousness in Second Language Learning (1990), that the notion of consciousness is both useful and possibly necessary in second language learning. Conscious processes are important in second language learning, but unconscious processes should not be neglected in language comprehension and production, both of which contribute to second language learning. He concludes that much more research is needed on learners’ noticing, which becomes intake when combined with input, on incidental learning, on implicit learning, and on what learners are conscious of as they learn a second language. This paper presents how Schmidt’s theory of the Noticing Hypothesis and L2 conscious processes have influenced other research and aroused many advocates and criticisms. The argument on the role of conscious and unconscious processes in SLL will last and needs more research. This theory lays a new theoretical foundation for constructing the theories of foreign language learning, and provides the theoretical support for renewing teaching ideas, improving teaching methods and learning strategies in English teaching and learning of China. However, whether and how the Noticing Hypothesis and L2 conscious processes are appropriate for English language education in China deserves more discussion and research.

This study investigated the mediating effect of trust and self-confidence on the effects of both conscious processes (coping strategies) and unconscious processes (defence mechanisms) on risky investment intention. In this context, data were collected from 832 participants using an online survey. Exploratory factor and correlation analyses were performed on the collected data, and the research model was tested using structural equation modelling. According to the results of the analysis, both coping strategies and defence mechanisms have an effect on risky investment intention, and self-confidence has a mediating role in this relationship. This study is unique because it explores the effects of both conscious and unconscious processes on financial decisions.

Much of information science theory assumes a type of rationality in how individuals process the world around them but the impact of misinformation and disinformation along with the polarization of society into competing information factions calls for new understandings around our relationships to information. Advances in neuroscience and psychology shed new light on how the brain processes information using both conscious and unconscious systems. Current theory in neuroscience emphasizes that the mind is not a unified whole but a network of networks constructing reality to anticipate needs. Knowledge is not a rational process but centers around the feeling of knowing which is the net output of competing brain processes. The feeling of knowing assumes a group context and offers a social epistemological stance that judges knowledge within this group context. With knowledge built into groups, power dynamics allow work to be accomplished but also privilege some group members over others. The feeling of knowing has significant implications for information science challenging theoreticians and practitioners to reconsider how individuals process information. For information behavior, the feeling of knowing offers a fuller picture looking at conscious and unconscious processing in the production of knowledge. For information literacy, the feeling of knowing sheds light on how individuals evaluate information and synthesize new sources into their existing knowledge. Ultimately, the feeling of knowing leads us toward new reflective and metacognitive tools that help meet this moment in the evolution of our information ecosystem. This book explores the idea that knowing is a feeling that results from the interactions of the brain’s unconscious and conscious processes and not through the accumulation of facts. It's intended to help librarians, educators, and information scientists better understand what neuroscience and psychology are teaching about what it means to know and how our brain learns.

We suggest consumer research develop an integrative approach that favors neither unconscious nor conscious processes but rather appreciates the contributions and limitations of both, and how they work together. We agree that unconscious processes precede all conscious ones, but we argue that conscious thinking plays a prominent and likely indispensible role in much of consumer behavior. Conscious thought is particularly useful for logical reasoning, quantification (including about money), and communication, all of which are relevant to consumer behavior. We argue that most human behavior is produced by an interactive combination of conscious and unconscious causes and that favoring one over the other will yield an overly simplistic understanding of consumer behavior. Pragmatic and ethical concerns also argue for retaining a strong interest in conscious processes among consumers.

The emotional finance theory was developed as an alternative to the mainstream theories which claim that markets are driven by investors’ conscious processes. Based on psychoanalysis, it searches the role of both conscious and unconscious processes in investment decisions. It offers new explanations regarding the causes and forecasting of the crises and bubbles that have been experienced frequently especially since the 2000s. In this framework, it makes use of concepts such as narrative, group feel, states of mind, and phantastic object, which have not been previously included in finance studies to date. This study represents the most comprehensive literature study carried out in the field of emotional finance to date. It analyses and models the fundamental components of the theory in the context of their determinants and effects. It offers findings to help market regulators, fund managers and investors understand the bubbles that occur in the markets.

Revealing robust neural correlates of conscious and unconscious visual processing: Activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses

Chromatic information is processed by the visual system both at an unconscious level and at a level that results in conscious perception of color. It remains unclear whether both conscious and unconscious processing of chromatic information depend on activity in the early visual cortex or whether unconscious chromatic processing can also rely on other neural mechanisms. In this study, the contribution of early visual cortex activity to conscious and unconscious chromatic processing was studied using single-pulse TMS in three time windows 40-100 msec after stimulus onset in three conditions: conscious color recognition, forced-choice discrimination of consciously invisible color, and unconscious color priming. We found that conscious perception and both measures of unconscious processing of chromatic information depended on activity in early visual cortex 70-100 msec after stimulus presentation. Unconscious forced-choice discrimination was above chance only when participants reported perceiving some stimulus features (but not color).

A century ago, Jung looked into the unconscious through complexes by using word association tests. Jung wrote, 'modern psychology with its investigation of complexes has opened up a psychic taboo area riddled with hopes and fears', and complexes remain an unexplored taboo area of research. In the present study, we have investigated the influence of complexes on unconscious cognitive processing, in particular on implicit learning. We have found that complexes shown to disturb conscious cognitive processing in fact enhanced the attention of the subjects and their performance on an implicit learning task. These results suggest that complexes are not just abstractions, but have various actual influences on both conscious and unconscious processing.

Six multinomial processing-tree models (W. H. Batchelder & D. M. Riefer, 1999), which include parameters representing conscious and unconscious memory processes, were tested using the recall-recognition paradigm. Data from 2 experiments were fit equally well by 3 of the 6 models. One model recognition was an extension of the generate-recognize model (L. L. Jacoby, 1998), and another was an extension of the non-high-threshold model (D. M. McBride & B. A. Dosher, 1999). The 3rd model was the source evaluation model (D. M. McBride & B. A. Dosher, 1999). Values of the parameters of 2 of these 3 models, excepting the non-high-threshold model, responded to experimental manipulations in accordance with the meaning of the parameters. The equivalence of models with regard to goodness-of-fit tests is discussed as is how experiments can be designed to demonstrate the superiority of one model over another. The potential usefulness of these models in the study of amnesia is considered.

Breaking continuous flash suppression (bCFS) is a widely used experimental paradigm that exploits detection tasks to measure the time an initially invisible stimulus requires to escape interocular suppression and access awareness. One pretty contentious and unresolved issue is whether differences in detection times reflect unconscious or conscious processing. To answer this question, here we introduce a novel approach (i.e., reverse-bCFS [rev-bCFS]) that measures the time an initially visible stimulus requires to be suppressed from awareness. Results from two experiments using face stimuli indicate that rev-bCFS can capture conscious effects, which indicates that contrasting standard bCFS with rev-bCFS can isolate unconscious processing occurring specifically during bCFS. For example, while face inversion impacted both bCFS and rev-bCFS, effects were larger in bCFS, suggesting a distinct contribution of unconscious processing to the advantage of upright over inverted faces in accessing awareness. Combining standard bCFS and rev-bCFS may offer a fruitful approach able to disentangle conscious and unconscious effects occurring during interocular suppression.

This article describes a neuropsychological theory of motor skill learning that is based on the idea that learning grows directly out of motor control processes. Three motor control processes may be tuned to specific tasks, thereby improving performance: selecting spatial targets for movement, sequencing these targets, and transforming them into muscle commands. These processes operate outside of awareness. A 4th, conscious process can improve performance in either of 2 ways: by selecting more effective goals of what should be changed in the environment or by selecting and sequencing spatial targets. The theory accounts for patterns of impairment of motor skill learning in patient populations and for learning-related changes in activity in functional imaging studies. It also makes a number of predictions about the purely cognitive, including accounts of mental practice, the representation of motor skill, and the interaction of conscious and unconscious processes in motor skill learning.

The effects of music exposure and own genre preference on conscious and unconscious cognitive processes: A pilot ERP study

"Abstract: The continuum of our life processes is transformed in personal figural experience by awareness. Experience is always more or less conscious, yet it is affected by ‘unseen’, unconscious processes running in the ground. During the figural sharpening and the evolvement of the contact cycle, just when awareness appears, there is an image-like, spontaneously-emerging representation, the ‘personal film’. It could phenomenologically be the symbolisation of the field in motion, as it is reorganised through an organism/environment contact episode. It carries in its structure imprints of both our conscious (figural) and unconscious (ground) processes, and thus it can be a comple- mentary tool in any kind of process and awareness work. This article is a Gestalt configuration of the personal film concept. Key words: personal film, basic awareness, full awareness, figure/ground configuration, image-like representation, process symbolising, process continuum, time sense, conscious and unconscious process."

Taking consciousness for real: Increasing the ecological validity of the study of conscious vs. unconscious processes