Automatic processes When examining the label "automatic" in social psychology, we find that some processes are intended, and others require recent conscious and intentional processing of related information. Automatic processes are more complicated than people may think. Some examples of automatic processes include motor skills, implicit biases, procedural tasks, and priming. The tasks that are listed can be done without the need for conscious attention. That being said automatic effects fall into three classes: Those that occur prior to conscious awareness (preconscious); those that require some form of conscious processing but that produce an unintended outcome (postconscious); and those that require a specific type of intentional, goal directed processing (goal-dependent). Preconscious automaticity requires only the triggering
proximal stimulus event, and occur prior to or in the absence of any conscious awareness of that event. Because they occur without our conscious awareness they are unnoticeable, uncontrollable, and nearly effortless. Postconscious automaticity depends on recent conscious experience for its occurrence. After they were primed they had to perform a general knowledge task. The results were that the participants in the professor condition outperformed those in the control conditions (those not primed at all). However, more attentional control and decision making are needed when introduced to novel (reference) situations like driving through an unfamiliar town. The process needs to be learned enough that it can be automatic, requiring little conscious thought as to how to do it.
Controlled processes One definition of a controlled process is an intentionally-initiated sequence of cognitive activities. In other words, when attention is required for a task, we are consciously aware and in control. Controlled processes require us to think about situations, evaluate and make decisions. An example would be reading this article. We are required to read and understand the concepts of these processes and it takes effort to think conceptually. Controlled processes are thought to be slower, since by definition they require effortful control; therefore, they generally cannot be conducted simultaneously with other controlled processes without task-switching or impaired performance. So the drawback of controlled processes is that humans are thought to have a
limited capacity for overtly controlling behavior. Being tightly capacity-limited, controlled processing imposes considerable limitations on speed and the ability to have divided attention. Divided attention is the ability to switch between tasks. Some tasks are easier to perform with other tasks like talking and driving. Holding a conversation, however, becomes more difficult when traffic increases because of the need to focus more on driving than on talking. Forster and Lavie found that the ability to focus on a task is influenced by processing capacity and perceptual load. Processing capacity is the amount of incoming information a person can process or handle at one time. Perceptual load is how difficult the task is. A low load task is when one can think less about the task they are involved in. A high load task is when one needs to devote all their focus to the task. If they become distracted then they won't be able to accomplish the task. In a study, participants were randomly assigned into two conditions, one requiring one task (small cognitive load) and one requiring two tasks (heavy cognitive load). In the one-task condition, participants were told that they would hear an anti- or pro-abortion speech and would have to diagnose the speaker's attitude toward abortion. The two-task condition had the same first assignment, but they were required to switch spots with the speaker and take their place after that. Even after being specifically told that they would be given further instructions at the next step, their cognitive load was affected in this study. Participants in the two-task condition performed more poorly than the one-task condition simply because they had the next task on their mind (they had extra cognitive load). Basically, the more tasks someone tries to manage at the same time, the more their performance will suffer.
Processes with ambiguous categorization Some actions utilize a combination of automatic and controlled processes. One example is brushing your teeth. At any point, you could think about each tooth as you individually scrub them, but for the most part, the action is automatic. Another example is playing a musical instrument. After learning where your fingers should be placed and how to play certain notes you no longer have to think about what your fingers are doing. Your controlled process are then engaged in thinking about dynamics and intonation. Some processes can even start as controlled and become more automatic. Some cognitive processes are difficult to categorize as distinctly automatic or controlled, either because they contain components of both types of process or because the phenomena are difficult to define or observe. An example of the former is driving a car. An example of the latter is
flow. Process of breathing, automatic and controlled, easily observed.
Flow Flow has been described as involving highly focused attention on the task at hand, loss of self-consciousness, and distorted time
perception, among other cognitive characteristics. Some people report that during flow states they are less aware of
autonomic responses such as hunger, fatigue, and discomfort. Some researchers hypothesize that because of this, some challenging tasks can counterintuitively require less effort to perform. This implies that another requirement of flow is to be free from constraints that force controlled processes to be used. Additionally, several areas of research indicate that during a state of flow an otherwise-controlled process becomes automatic allowing it to behave dominant over all other automatic processes.
Dual Process Theories Dual process theories are a class of theories that are used to explain many cognitive processes, including judgement and decision-making. Dual process theories assume that humans possess two types of cognitive processing that map onto automatic and controlled processing: Type 1 and Type 2 (Also known as System 1 and System 2, respectively). The automatic/controlled distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 is only one of many common distinctions. Some others include: unconscious/conscious, associative/rule-based, and intuitive/deliberate. Besides the automatic/controlled distinction, criticism exists for common distinctions between Type 1 and Type 2 processes, arising from inconsistent findings or disagreements among researchers. For instance, the unconscious/conscious is commonly criticized for its lack of conceptual clarity, making it vague and an unreliable identifier of Type 1 and Type 2 processing. ==See also==