Unconscious cognition

Overview

"Cognition," a term that derives from the Latin cognoscere—to know—refers to how humans create knowledge through all the mental processes related to thought, experience, and the senses. These processes result in the development of perceptions, sensation, learning, memory, and intuition, among many others, even though the jury is still out on the extent to which these are dependent upon psychology, emotions, or brain structures and neurons.

Part of these processes are conscious actions yet also occur automatically or while the person is unaware; this is what is known as "unconscious cognition," without which thought, learning, and coping with daily life would be impossible. In most classic theories, unconscious and automatic processes are viewed as fueling conscious actions. A simple analogy might be how one is able to use a computer's software, yet cannot see the hardware that enables the computer to function by running processes behind the scenes. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the brain and the mind work in similar yet much more complex ways than a computer because human beings are beset by a vast array of emotions that machines cannot feel.

Unconscious processes are mostly understood to occur automatically, that is, without deliberate intent. According to many classical theories of cognition, these automatic and unconscious processes usually happen in a "bottom up" way, that is, sparked by stimuli in more-or-less direct and linear fashion. However, higher level cognition processes—that is, those that require organized thought, attention and focus—are assumed to require conscious input. Among these higher level processes one could list learning and engaging in abstract thought. Many are the fields that study the field of cognition, including psychology, philosophy, and sciences such as neurobiology. Brain scientists know that conscious cognition is controlled by top-down signals from the pre-frontal cortex, which intensify or defuse how sensorial stimuli is processed.

Although many thinkers had speculated through the centuries about thought systems and the unconscious, the study of the unconscious and its interactions with consciousness began in earnest in the late nineteenth century. Among the forerunners of cognitive psychology are Wilhelm Wundt and Williams James, who argued that the sole objective of the new field of psychology should be to understand cognition. They believed this would set the field firmly in the realm of scientific inquiry rather than, as it later became, a social science. At the time, there was no sense of studying the unconscious as a separate process or a field of study per se.

Sigmund Freud was among the first to make the unconscious an object of serious study; in fact, he gave it a prominent role in his whole work on psychoanalysis. Freud determined that individuals have perceptual awareness, that is, they are conscious and aware of being conscious. This is different from receiving sensory information or stimuli and processing it without being conscious or aware of doing so, which is also possible. For Freud, the mind is divided into layers. The conscious state is where the "ego" dwells, that is, the identity connected to the conscious state. The ego is ruled—to various extents—by the "super ego," the critical part of identity, which has integrated all social rules and norms. Nevertheless, a significant part of an individual's identity is fueled by chaotic, unexpressed impulses and desires that dwell beneath the level of conscious awareness; this is known as the "id."

The id stores content, which may be repressed or hidden from consciousness, but never fully eliminated. The id sends signals to the pre-conscious state of people, a state beneath awareness but where stored content is accessible to recall by the conscious states. While the unconscious contains negative, unreasonable, and destructive elements, it is also the source from which all creative forces arise. Freud and his followers posited that individuals may never have a clear and objective experience of all the cognitive processes taking place below consciousness, even if they may be aware of their existence and superficial function.

For most of the twentieth century, cognitive processes of the mind were considered as proper for the fields of behavioral and cognitive psychology, considered more akin to the hard sciences, and as separate from psychoanalysis. In time, however, the areas of research began to overlap. In 1973, psychologist Jean Piaget published an important paper titled "The Affective Unconscious and the Cognitive Unconscious," in which he argued for the need to merge the area of psychology interested in cognitive functions and that of psychoanalysis, to create one improved theoretical field. He described having separate fields of study for the same issue as studying human personality as a puzzle from which important pieces were missing.

In the 1990s and during the first decades of the twenty-first century, consciousness expert Max Velmans posited that consciousness does not direct cognitive processes. Instead, he described consciousness as a result or output of cognitive processes, perhaps even a collateral result. The main goal of consciousness is to generate a sense of self, self-acknowledgement and self-reference, that is, to be aware of one's mind. In that sense, it may appear as if consciousness does play an important role in cognition processes, but this is deceiving. To describe this, experts use the example of wearing shoes. Take, for example, wearing shoes all day long. Shoes are bound to the feet, they mediate between one's feet and the ground all day long. Nevertheless, unless they are tight or otherwise uncomfortable, people usually become unaware of their shoes throughout the day. Even though the sensory input of shoes on feet continues, people simply forget they are wearing shoes.

Cognitive processes function similarly. A person's attention is directed elsewhere, but cognitive processes continue to work uninterrupted. In this view, consciousness acts passively, to a certain extent, as pertains to cognitive processes, while the brain continues to process a vast array of very complex cognitive tasks. Critics, however, argue that conscious and unconscious processes are counterparts and much more interconnected than previously known.

Although the role of the unconscious in the processes of cognition continues to be hotly debated, consensus is growing as pertains to the importance of the unconscious and the need for consciousness is to mediate flexible and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, unconscious information processing shares many characteristics with consciousness.

Further Insights

Consciousness has a very limited operational capacity compared with unconscious cognition processes. Short-term memory, for example, a crucial part of consciousness, can only process about seven items at the same time, according to experts. Consciously, there are very few things we can do at the same time. When we speak, we are usually focused on what we say, so that this task takes up most of our conscious capacities.

In his work Towards a Theory of Consciousness (1992), Cognitive psychologist George Mandler explains that consciousness needs to be limited in order to function properly and allow individuals to maintain a coherent experience of reality. To achieve this, consciousness must shut out from its awareness the myriad processes occurring automatically "behind the scenes" or unconsciously, which are a constant and chaotic flow of information that must be processed and organized, even when we are in a state of relaxation. Unconscious cognition, then, occurs parallel to consciousness.

Many of the tasks performed automatically were once incorporated consciously. Humans perform thousands of daily tasks, encountering countless stimuli to which they must respond and/or commit to memory. Many of these will eventually be learned, integrated, and become routine and will no longer appear to the conscious mind as a novelty; it will, in time, become part of the automatic processes that go on every day behind one's conscious awareness. Take, for example, learning to drive. Learning to drive requires a great deal of memorization—the rules and regulations—as well as focus and attention to master all the actions involved in driving an automobile successfully. The brain needs to review and supervise all new information until it is committed to memory and incorporated in the repository of tasks mastered. Eventually, the mechanics of driving a car will become "second nature" to the individual, so that she or he will do much of it automatically—partly unconsciously, even—freeing the consciousness to do several other tasks, such as paying attention to surrounding traffic, listening to news on the radio, changing the radio station, thinking about the day ahead, or holding a conversation with another passenger in the car.

Memory experts note that much of what is committed to memory does not lay simply stored and dormant forever. To the contrary, the information is constantly tapped and retrieved by different stimuli and emotions. Moreover, memories are not static and frozen in time, as a fly preserved in amber; rather they keep being reorganized by cognitive processes and change over time. Individuals are not aware of how memories change, however. Memories are edited and adapt to constantly changing life experiences, yet most people are sure that their memories are an accurate and unchanging record of how things really occurred.

Unconscious cognition has many other important functions. One of the these is to filter stimuli-provided information as it moves toward consciousness. To process an activity intentionally, such as when we concentrate on a task, takes a great deal of mental energy and effort. To facilitate this, the unconscious "filters" or selects information according to a wide array of needs and situations, which may include emotional relevance (e.g., fear, pleasure, uncertainty); new or unusual information (e.g., a stranger or a surprising event); relatedness (whether it is relevant to what is going on at the moment); and complexity (the need to tap complex skills to solve a problem). This filter is highly effective, allowing individuals to navigate successfully thousands of daily tasks without having to engage in confusion and undue mental effort. At specific times, however, the filter is less controlling, such as when a person is asleep or experiencing some sort of altered consciousness.

Experts also study the mechanisms by which cognitive processes function when people do a variety of conscious tasks, also known as "multi-tasking." Some multi-tasking efforts work better than others. For example, listening to music and doing homework at the same time tends to work well, allowing a person to accomplish both tasks effectively. Driving and talking on a cellphone at the same time, however, has proven to be inefficient and, also, dangerous. There are good reasons for the difference between scenarios; in the first example, one is engaging in a task that requires a great deal of focus (studying) while at the same time doing another one that requires much less focus (listening to music). In the case of driving while talking on the phone, however, both tasks require great mental focus, and engaging in both tasks at once results in one or the other being filtered to an extent that may prove either rude or extremely dangerous.

Researchers also study what happens with the information that is not selected for retrieval from the unconscious and used in conscious activities. Unconscious cognitive processes are constantly at work interpreting and organizing all daily stimuli conveyed to the brain by the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Moreover, everybody processes this information differently, according to each person's distinct subjectivity. As they are conveyed to the brain, these stimuli or impressions are turned into chemical signs that interact with brain neurons, so that the psychological and physiological aspects are both involved in the process.

Innumerable disconnected stimuli inundate the senses constantly, and the brain cortex reacts most to those to which it is more sensitive or predisposed. Cognitive processes—perceiving, interpreting, learning, archiving, committing to memory—take care of organizing and adapting all these signs and transforming them into coherent information. What is coherent, of course, depends on what conforms to a framework of expectations and knowledge that a person has built through his or her life. In other words, we constantly interpret and make assumptions about what is going on around us. Although one can pay attention to and process only a limited amount of these events at the same time, it would not be possible for us to make sense of the world and cope with it, were it not for the unconscious cognitive processes always at work.

Issues

Unless asleep or unconscious, our brains are constantly awash in sensorial stimuli, of which very little actually makes it to the surface of consciousness. Most of the information received is inhibited or kept away from conscious processing. The brain gives precedence to what is interesting, what is necessary or urgent, and what is taboo or forbidden.

Information relegated to the unconscious will also be used to interpret the world, but differently than the ways in which it is done consciously. In fact, it is more difficult to correct or amend this hidden information, which in many cases is connected to ingrained stereotypes, phobias or pathological fears, taboos, and traumatic events in a person's past—such as combat, abuse, abandonment, or discrimination. In some cases, brain damage or injuries may impede a person from making sense of some types of stimuli, as in the cases of people who are not able to process written words or recognize the facial features of their loved ones.

The information stored in the unconscious may last there for quite a long time if it is stored in long-term memory. Our memory has very different uses and is stored in different areas of the brain. For example, life experiences are stored in episodic memory, learned procedures are stored in procedural memory, while abstract knowledge is stored in semantic memory. All of these are interconnected with the areas of the brain in which unconscious cognitive processes occur.

Among the most debated issues in the arena of unconscious cognition is the area of interaction between the emotional content and the conscious and unconscious. Consensus exists that the holistic integration, organization, and interaction between both systems is the core regulator of behavioral activity. Evolutionary psychologists argue that brains have evolved in such a way that consciousness does not need to do those tasks that the unconscious cognition does efficiently. The emotional and sensorial interaction is the first and main experience for these two systems. Some explain it in neurophysiological terms, as stimuli sparking conscious experience and brain structures processing the information unconsciously, recreating it for conscious interpretation.

However, emotions, as other experts argue, are a crucial part of this process. Many things influence cognitive processes beyond stimulus and response brain mechanisms: Emotions are present in the form of past experiences, habits, expectations, personal attachments, and other social factors. The latter are subjective and can sometimes be partly conscious; yet they are, at the same time, regulated from the most unconscious and mechanical areas of the mind.

Consciousness theorists, such as Antonio Damasio, developer of the triple layer of consciousness theory, argue that stages of consciousness build upon one another. First, emotions allow people to retrieve information built from past experiences in similar scenarios and react from it; this, in turn, contributes to people's repertory of possible responses. It all begins with an initial sensation, which may be conscious, unconscious, perhaps both, yet never random. This is followed by a firing up of conscious brain activity. Stimuli may also be external or internal. An external stimulus might be one sparked by touch or taste, while an internal one, a perception, a remembrance. The experience is so universal it is consecrated in what is, arguably, literature's most famous scene. In Marcel Proust's Swan's Way (1913), the narrator bites into a small French cake, the taste of which unleashes a deluge of memories and one of the world's longest and most iconic works, In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927).

Bibliography

Alcock, J.E. (2022). Belief and the cognitive unconscious. In A.S. Reber & R. Allen (eds.) The cognitive unconscious: The first half century, p. 17. Oxford University Press, psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1093/oso/9780197501573.003.0016

Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the brain: Deciphering how the brain codes our thoughts. London: Penguin.

Matlin, M. W., & Farmer, T. A. (2016). Cognition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Mitchell, S., & Black, M. (2016) Freud and beyond: A history of modern psychoanalytic thought. New York: Basic Books.

Schneider, S., & Velmans, M. (2017). The Blackwell companion to consciousness. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Shanks, D.R., Malejka, S. & Vadillo, M.A. (2021). The challenge of inferring unconscious mental processes. Experimental Psychology, 68(3), 113-129, doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000517

Simler, K., & Hanson, R. (2018) The elephant in the brain: Hidden motives in everyday life. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Velmans, M. (2016) Towards a deeper understanding of consciousness. London: Routledge.

Wokke, M. E., van Gaal, S., Scholte, H. S., Ridderinkhof, K. R., and Lamme, V. A. F. (2011). The flexible nature of unconscious cognition. PLoS.One 6(9). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025729