Hidden Minds (21 page)

As the notion of preconscious processing became more widely accepted, it continued to gain support from various sources. In the same way that unintended actions associated with absent-mindedness could be viewed as examples of preconscious processing, so it was that other everyday phenomena succumbed to the same analysis.

Human beings are constantly making use of unconscious knowledge. With respect to language, the rules that determine sentence construction are applied in a completely intuitive way. Most people would accept that ‘the big blue car’ is better English than ‘the blue big car’; however, apart from the odd language specialist, few would be able to justify their opinion. The syntactical and semantic rules that govern word selection operate from below the awareness threshold and are largely inaccessible. Experimental investigations began to demonstrate that many aspects of human behaviour are influenced by inaccessible rules and heuristics.

In 1977, psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson, published a now celebrated article titled ‘Telling more than we can know: verbal reports on mental processes’. Experimental subjects were asked to assess the quality of four
identical
pairs of stockings. Subjects made choices, and justified their choices with reference to the quality of the material. In fact, it transpired that stockings judged to be of better quality were simply those presented on the right-hand side. Of course, being identical, there were no real differences between the stockings. The reason generated by subjects to justify their choice was merely a post-hoc rationalisation.

More sophisticated experiments revealed that people readily acquire knowledge in the form of rules, but are wholly unaware that such learning has taken place. In a typical experiment of this kind, subjects are asked to watch a visual display on a computer screen. The display changes and develops according to a highly complex set of rules – too complex to be worked out during the course of the experiment. After watching such displays, subjects are then asked to make predictions (e.g. Where will the white circle appear next?). Studies of this kind have found that subjects perform remarkably well, making very accurate predictions; however, when asked to explain their reasoning, most usually confess that they were just guessing. Most have absolutely no idea why they were choosing to make one prediction rather than another. Clearly, investigations of this kind demonstrate that complex rules can be learned and subsequently employed to guide judgements without ever rising into awareness.

One of the most invariant characteristics of human beings is their tendency to form favourable preferences based on familiarity. The technical term for this phenomenon is the mere
exposure effect.
If shown pictures of geometric shapes, buildings, or people – anything in fact – experimental subjects have a marked inclination to judge pictures that have been shown at least once before more pleasant than comparable pictures that haven’t. In the laboratory, at least, familiarity breeds not contempt but affection.

In 1980 an important study was published by William Kunst-Wilson and Robert Zajonc. Experimental subjects were exposed to subliminal figures (polygons), which were then presented supraliminally to the same subjects -but mixed up with new figures of similar design. Although experimental subjects did not recognise any of the supraliminal presentations, they demonstrated a significant preference for those that had been previously shown to them subliminally. This study prompted many other investigations that produced the same or similar results — demonstrating that familiarity-based preferences are substantially influenced by unconscious memories.

Another everyday phenomenon thought to be influenced by preconscious processing was social perception. For human beings, first impressions appear to be very important. They are formed very quickly and, more often than not, without much consideration. Perhaps the most extreme instance of a swift and favourable social judgement of this kind is ‘love at first sight’.

In an attempt to understand the mysterious processes that govern social perception, many psychologists began to look to the unconscious for answers. It was suggested that first impressions might be mediated by unconscious information. Subsequently tasks were devised in which subliminal words (relating to character traits) were presented to experimental subjects just before they were required to form an opinion about persons for whom they were given no other information. Again, a strong relationship was found between the tone of subliminal presentations and subsequent judgements.

In addition to the growing body of empirical support for the unconscious, a major theoretical advance helped to consolidate the unconscious as a legitimate concept in contemporary neuroscience. This new advance was an extension of information-processing theory known as
connectionism
or
parallel distributed processing
(PDP). This approach was something of a hybrid, combining the computer model with extant knowledge of biological mechanisms in the brain.

The PDP model postulates the existence of
independent processing units,
each capable of accomplishing a specific (but very basic) task. When active, each unit excites or inhibits other units in an extended network (which resembles the network of neurones in the brain). Eventually, all of this frantic activity is resolved in a stable pattern of mutual influence, which represents the information being processed.

The PDP model has a number of features which were of interest to those studying the unconscious. Firstly, the PDP system does not contain a single central processor – the equivalent of a place where consciousness is synthesised. The PDP analogue of consciousness emerges from an interacting system of insensible processing units. Secondly, the level of activation in each processing unit can vary. Thus, a subgroup of processing units might become gently active, affect the whole system, but not achieve conscious representation. In other words, PDP allows behaviour to be influenced by subliminal events. Finally, the PDP model replaced serial processing with parallel processing. Thus, a vast number of processing units are in conversation at any particular moment in time. The number of active units and the speed with which they deal with information necessarily exceeds the capacity of consciousness.

By the end of the 1980s a considerable amount of research had been undertaken, exploring the unconscious from within the new cognitive framework. Studies had been conducted on unconscious perception, unconscious learning, unconscious memory, and the acquisition of automated skills. The computer metaphor had been extremely fruitful, it had inspired a new generation of experimental psychologists to re-examine a concept that had lost scientific credibility in the custody of psychoanalysis, and had been neglected altogether by behaviourists. A large body of experimental evidence had been gathered, demonstrating the importance of preconscious processing, which in turn attracted the attention of other respectable disciplines; for example, neurologists and assorted brain scientists were also taking a more keen interest in the new unconscious. In addition, theoretical advances like the PDP model were entirely consistent with the view that information processing in the brain is a largely unconscious activity.

In 1987 the psychologist John Kihlstrom published a brief article in the journal
Science.
It was titled ‘The cognitive unconscious’. In this article Kihlstrom reviewed numerous lines of research (including some described above), which, taken together, demonstrated the emergence of a new model, a new empirical ethos, and a new unconscious.

A key passage in this article concerns the scientific legitimacy of automated processes. Kihlstrom accepts the evidence that in specific circumstances (as demonstrated particularly in laboratory studies), meanings and implications can be understood in the absence of awareness. Consequently individuals can make a judgement (for example, whether they like someone), and then act on that judgement, without any knowledge of how it was reached. Kihlstrom stresses that this does not mean that genuine cognitive activity has not taken place. Rather, it means that the process of judgement or inference has become automated, and hence unavailable for introspection.

Although the unconscious might seem dumb, it is, after all, very smart, in many respects, it is re-formatted intelligence. Kihlstrom’s final conclusion is dramatic. Although constrained by the formal requirements of journal writing, he is unable to conceal a flare of genuine excitement.

A new model, A new ethos. A new unconscious.

Yet, if you compare this excerpt with Freud’s famous ‘third-blow’ lecture, it is difficult not to conclude that, fundamentally, they are both saying the same thing: the unconscious has been very much underrated.

When Freud first arrived in London in 1938 he was accommodated very briefly in Little Venice. Although he had no way of knowing it at the time, the house he was staying in would one day display a commemorative plaque bearing his name and the name of a man who had been born in the same house twenty-six years earlier. Eventually, it was decided that Freud’s short sojourn in Little Venice was too insignificant to merit commemoration, and another plaque was mounted exclusively devoted to the birth and short life of Alan Turing.

The old plaque was a rare (and perhaps the only) instance of Freud and Turing being honoured together in a public place. This is hardly surprising as at first sight – they seem to occupy entirely different universes. The name Freud conjures images of nineteenth-century Vienna, hysteria, and the landscape of dreams, whereas Turing conjures images of Bletchley Park, mathematics, and the bright new world of information technology. However, in their very different ways, these two men did much the same thing. They both provided the twentieth century with a model of mind. Both of these models in one way or another – dominated psychology for the entire century.

Ostensibly, the psychoanalytic model and the computer-inspired cognitive model are poles apart. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1980s, with respect to the unconscious, the traditions of psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology had demonstrated a curious convergence. Although they had started from very different positions, their destinations were the same. On the big issues concerning the nature of mental life, they agreed. Yes, the importance of consciousness was overrated, and yes, the unconscious was far from stupid.

The hidden intelligence was alive and well, but now simply residing under a different name.

I
n the 1930s and 1940s the Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield conducted an extraordinary series of experiments that dramatically demonstrated the intimate relationship between brain and mind. His work represented a troubling challenge to the advocates of Cartesian dualism. The 1.4 kg of gelatinous matter that comprises the human brain was shown to be the organ of consciousness – the physical reality behind the phenomenal world.

Penfield was originally concerned with locating the foci of epileptic seizures in the brain. Once this was achieved, diseased tissue could then be removed by surgery. The problem was identification. How could these suspect areas be located?

Individuals with epilepsy characteristically report unusual sensory experiences and impressions before a seizure occurs. These warning signs – which differ from person to person – are known as auras. Penfield reasoned that if the cerebral cortex of the brain was exposed and electrically stimulated, this might provoke an aura, thus indicating the location of the diseased tissue site. The cortex covers the surface of the brain and mediates higher mental functions such as conscious perception and thinking.

In order to undertake this procedure Penfield anaesthetised his patients and cut around the circumference of their skulls – he was thus able to expose the cortex by raising the crown of the head like a lid. Because the brain does not register pain directly (it can only register pain via specific nerve pathways from the rest of the body), Penfield was able to place electrodes on the cortex without causing his patients any discomfort – that ís, apart from the obvious psychological discomfort that must necessarily accompany having a surgeon play with one’s brain.

The surgical removal of abnormal tissue proved to be an effective means of ameliorating epileptic seizures; however, Penfield’s permanent entry in neuroscience textbooks was secured not on account of his clinical successes but because of the responses he elicited from patients while stimulating their brains with an electric probe.

When stimulated, specific areas of the brain produced specific responses. These varied from involuntary movements to a wide range of sensory experiences – tingling, feeling hot or cold, seeing flashes of light or abstract patterns, hearing clicks and buzzing. Some patients reported experiences of a far more complex nature, in the form of visual and auditory hallucinations. One, for example, thought he was being chased by armed robbers (who came at him from behind and to the left). Another heard a Beethoven symphony so clearly that the patient accused Penfield of concealing a radio.

Perhaps the most interesting responses that Penfield elicited were those associated with electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes. These structures form much of the lower side of each half of the brain and are positioned just above the ears. Patients reported a range of odd experiences such as
déjà vu,
or its exact opposite,
jamais vu.
They also experienced different mood states – fear, foreboding, and euphoria; however, the most extraordinary reports that Penfield elicited were of so-called dreams. These took the form of vivid hallucinatory experiences in which the patient became the protagonist in a short narrative. These experiences were never very elaborate, but involved the appearance of characters (There are a lot of people’), awareness of different environments (‘… an office somewhere’), and sounds (‘I heard boom, boom, boom’). These experiences were described as dreams, and sometimes possessed the unique, inexpressible quality of dreams – making it hard for patients to offer a precise account of what was happening to them.