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Module 1.5a

match our conscious beliefs (I am not prejudiced) (Greenwald & Lai, 2020). At other times,
we’re motivated to avoid thinking, especially when careful thought (How much sugar is in
that dessert?) conflicts with temptations (I want that piece of cake!) (Woolley & Risen, 2018).
Yet most people, most of the time, mistakenly believe that their intentions and deliberate
choices rule their lives. They don’t.
Although consciousness enables us to exert voluntary control and to communicate our
mental states to others, it is but the tip of the information-processing iceberg. Just ask the
volunteers who chose a card after watching a magician shuffle through the deck (Olson
et al., 2015). In nearly every case, the magician swayed participants’ decisions by subtly
allowing one card to show for longer — but 91 percent of participants believed they had
made the choice on their own. Being intensely focused on an activity (such as reading about
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
consciousness, we hope) increases your total brain activity no more than 5 percent above its
baseline rate. Even when you rest, activity whirls inside your head (Raichle, 2010).
This unconscious parallel processing is faster than conscious sequential processing, but
both are essential. Parallel processing enables your mind to take care of routine business. parallel processing processing
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Sequential processing is best for solving new problems, which requires your focused multiple aspects of a stimulus or
attention on one thing at a time. Try this: If you are right-handed, move your right foot problem simultaneously.
in a smooth counterclockwise circle and write the number 3 repeatedly with your right sequential processing
hand — at the same time. Try something equally difficult: Tap a steady beat three times with processing one aspect of a
your left hand while tapping four times with your right hand. Both tasks require conscious stimulus or problem at a time;
generally used to process new
attention, which can be in only one place at a time. If time is nature’s way of keeping every- information or to solve difficult
thing from happening at once, then consciousness is nature’s way of keeping us from think- problems.
ing and doing everything at once.

®
AP Science Practice Check Your Understanding

Examine the Concept Apply the Concept
▶ ▶What is dual processing? ▶ ▶Explain the concept of the two-track mind.
▶ ▶Explain blindsight. ▶ ▶Compare and contrast parallel and sequential processing.
Answers to the Examine the Concept questions can be found in Appendix C at the end of the book.

Module 1.5a REVIEW

1.5-1 What is the place of consciousness in 1.5-2 What is the dual processing being revealed
psychology’s history? by today’s cognitive neuroscience?

• After initially claiming consciousness as their area of • Scientists studying the brain mechanisms underlying
study in the nineteenth century, psychologists aban- consciousness and cognition have discovered that the
doned it in the first half of the twentieth century, turn- mind processes information on two separate tracks, one
ing instead to the study of observable behavior because operating at a conscious level (sequential processing) and
they believed consciousness was too difficult to study the other at an implicit, unconscious level (parallel pro-
scientifically. cessing). Parallel processing takes care of routine business,
• Since the 1960s, our awareness of ourselves and our while sequential processing is best for solving new prob-
environment — our consciousness — has reclaimed its place lems that require our attention.
as an important area of research, such as in the interdisci- • Together, this dual processing — conscious and uncon-
plinary field of cognitive neuroscience. scious — affects our perception, memory, attitudes, and
other cognitions.

Sleep: Consciousness Module 1.5a 91

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