Automatic Processing and Working Memory

Jansma, Ramsey, Slagter and Kahn (2001)

• Looked at fMRI and development of automatic processing in constistent mapping.
• Practice was associated with reduces usage of capacity-limited working memory. (central executive)
• Automatic processing was evidenced by decreased activation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right superior frontal cortex
• Automatic and controlled processing have similar functional anatomical representation but differ in efficiency of working memory processing.

Schneider and Shriffin (1977)

• They Proposed clear theoretical distinctions between controlled and automatic processing
• Controlled: limited capacity, requires attention, flexible (can be modified)
• Automatic: Unlimited capacity, no attention required, inflexible (cannot be modified)

Norman and Shallice (1986)

• Fully and partially automatic processes
• controlled by supervisory attentional system (similar to the central executive see working memory lectures)

Cognitive Bottleneck

• Pashler et al. (2001)
• Experiment requires rapid response to 2 stimuli
• the second is presented close in time to the first which results in a slowed response to the second.
• Physiological Refractory period: processing bottleneck: cannot select response to 2 stimuli at the same time, can only respond serially
• This suggests that fully automatic processing rarely occurs.

Effect of Practice

• Practice had been seen to improve dual task performance.
• Controlled Processing: When a task requires conscious control and is high in cognitive demand
• Automatic Processing: This does not require conscious control and is also difficult to control consciously. It also uses little processing capacity. E.g. Skilled driver or musician

Stroop Task & Automatic Processing

• The Stroop Task required participants to say the colour a word is written in. The words are presented as other colour names.
• Participants tend to find difficulty in this task as they say the colour written in the word rather than the colour of the text.
• this indicates and provides evidence for the automatic processing of language.

Consistent Mapping Task

• Schneider and Shriffin (1977)
• The participant is given a target, and is presented with serial frames. They must identify when the target is present in a frame.
• Initially, participants had 55% correct performance, however after 900 trials, they reached 90% correct performance. This occurs without any intervention, and leads to the used of only a few cognitive resources.
• An increase in the number of characters in either memory set or distractor had no effect on performance.

Varied Mapping Task

• Schneider and Shriffin (1977)
• The memory and distractor sets are always letters. a letter can be in the memory set in one trial then become a distractor later. The distractor in one trial can also become the target on another
• Results: This is found to be so difficult that the participants don't achieve automatic processing, even with practice.
• In contrast with the consistent mapping task, increasing the number of characters caused a decrease in performance.
• Performance was only successful if distractors were shown for 400msec rather than 120 msec. Performance was still only 50% correct however in contrast to 90% in the consistent task which had faster presentations.