The Case of Unconscious Attention
Is awareness needed for any of the psychological functions we perform? Do we need to consciously perceive an object in order to respond to it? The answer is not obvious. As we saw in the previous post How come we are not zombies? part of the challenge of explaining consciousness, of explaining our rich subjective experience of the world is the difficulty in linking these experiences to the physical world, to the material realm. However, one can explore this question by means other than searching for its physical bases. Rather than targeting the elements physically responsible for the conscious phenomenon one might choose to experiment with the psychological processes and functions in which the presence or absence of consciousness makes a difference. In other words, to aim for its function, rather than for its structure.
Let’s take the phenomenon of attention. Attention is a phenomenon intuitively linked to consciousness in the sense that attending to a stimulus (an object, a sound, or even a thought) seems to be inseparable from being conscious of it, at least to some degree. If we focus our attention on a red light while driving or on the sound of someone calling our name we become aware of the stoplight and of our name being called. It sounds reasonable to think that attention and consciousness are closely related.
So, the experimental question would be: can we attend to something unconsciously? Let’s see. Perhaps there is a sense in which this is possible. Don’t we all on some occasions behave so automatically that we don’t become aware of what we are doing and responding to until we consciously “come back” to it? Perhaps preparing breakfast one day after another becomes automatic. And on some occasions, a funny mistake might “brings us back” to reality, like throwing the spoon into the garbage and the yogurt cup into the sink. When we realize it we come back to the present. But it’s safe to assume that some attention needs to be in play when we automatize our actions despite the low degree of consciousness we put in them. We still need to move around our kitchen, avoid obstacles and reach for the correct utensils, at least functionally enough to get the job done.
Okay. So in repeated, automatized behavior we can grant some kind of “unconscious attention”. But one might discredit this example because these behaviors are, precisely, automatized. The fact that the routine is learned to such a degree makes all stimuli to be expected, so when attention to them is “a given” of course consciousness need not be fully present. And this is fair. It is more interesting to find an example where a novel stimulus, an unpredictable and unexpected one, can shift our attention and trigger a response while we remain unconscious of it.
Is this possible? Actually yes. It has been tested using the experimental paradigm of priming, where a stimulus is presented to alter, influence, or condition the following one. The logic of priming is simple: if I read a soft drink advertisement panel and later I am asked to name a soft drink brand, it is more likely that the one that comes to mind is the one I just saw -as simple as that. One can think of publicity fundamentally as an effort to prime our thoughts and decisions. In an experimental task, the priming effect alters the speed of response (what it’s called “reaction time” or RT), where the response can be pressing a key, uttering a word, or executing a movement. If I am primed towards a stimulus —or to a group of stimuli — I will react faster to it.
Just like the soft drink advertisement has been shown to affect our choices (we are primed to pick among the brands we are exposed to), experiments can be designed to find out to what extent unconscious primes affect us, for example, the influence of an image so briefly presented that we don’t become aware of it, that it doesn’t reach into our conscious experience. Unconscious primes (stimuli of which the participant is unaware) are found to trigger and influence our attention and prime our response to the perceived stimuli. Let’s see how all of this goes.
Just like waiting at a stoplight while driving, imagine an experiment where a green light on the screen requires you to hit a button and a red light requires you to not hit it. There are only two stimuli: “Go” or “No-Go”, either you hit the button or you don’t. When the unconscious priming approach was applied to this task, they showed the signs for a duration short enough to remain unconscious to the subject. It was found that an unseen, unconscious, unperceived “No-Go” stimulus made participants take longer (higher RT) to respond to a subsequent — conscious — “Go” signal. Because the “No-Go” response was primed subjects were prepared to suppress the response. The unconscious perception of the “No-Go” image hindered the machinery needed to press the button (for instance, hand-readiness) and they took longer to respond to a “Go” signal — all because they needed to reverse the inhibition first, an inhibition triggered in absence of awareness, elicited by an unconscious image.
So, the answer to our first question. Yes, we can pay attention to something that we are not aware of. An unconscious image can influence our dispositions, and our actions (in fact, publicity does this every time, we need not consciously perceive nor attend to an advertisement in order for it to have an influence on us). Consciousness is not needed for the environment to cross the doors of perception, for the information to enter and influence our brains. If attention does not need awareness, one might ask what is consciousness really needed for. This is for my next story: “What Is Consciousness For?”
