CONSCIOUSNESS

3. Cognitive Sciences and Psychology 131
enable us to reconsider the connections among awareness, cognition, behavior and physiology.
The final part of our session will explore whether the notion of Cognitive Unconscious
still operates with an assumption of the mind-body split. We will conclude by suggesting
that both the methodologies of biofeedback and mindfulness allow us to go beyond this split
without recoiling to dualism or reductionism. V3
177 The Role of Consciousness, Automaticity, and Stimulus-Independent Thought
in Deductive Reasoning John Selden, Annie Selden (Mathematical
Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM)
In this paper we describe our perspective on the structure of deductive reasoning, that is,
we describe the principal psychological components of that reasoning and how they interact.
The components include: consciousness, the automated guiding of actions, stimulus-independent
thought, and what we call local memory, a temporary, easily accessed, part of memory. In
discussing deductive reasoning, we restrict our attention to the construction of mathematical
arguments, and in particular, to proof construction, but no prior knowledge of mathematics
will be required to understand our examples. We view proof construction as consisting of a
sequence of actions that may be physical (e.g., drawing a diagram), or mental (e.g., focusing
on the meaning of the conclusion). Each action arises from an inner (i.e., interpreted) situation
in the partly constructed proof, and we speak of situation-action pairs. Each such pair may
originally have had a conscious justification, but after occurring in several proof constructions,
becomes automated, that is, the action occurs without the justification coming to mind
- one just does it. Indeed, such automaticity seems to be essential in the construction of complex
proofs to avoid massive divided attention and an overburdened working memory. This is
the same kind of automaticity that Bargh (1997) and others have indicated plays a large role
in everyday life. We call small, indivisible, automated situation-action pairs behavioral schemas,
and view them as part of procedural memory. Within an appropriate context, they are
always available and do not require effortful recollection. They do require consciousness of
triggering situations and cannot be combined outside of consciousness. For example, a linear
equation normally requiring several steps (i.e., actions) cannot be solved without the results of
most of those actions coming to mind. Similarly, consciousness of one?s actions during proof
construction appears to be essential. For experienced provers, such as mathematicians, a large
part of proof construction is accomplished through the activation of behavioral schemas, but
often there is a part of the proof construction that requires genuine problem solving, that is,
novel constructions and combinations of ideas. Upon coming to such a situation, one might
review the part of the argument already constructed, search for additional information, or
draw a diagram. If such activities were not helpful, one could turn to stimulus-independent
thought (SIT), that is, to the seemingly random ideas that come to mind when the brain is not
purposefully processing information (Mason, et al., 2007). Such thought can occur when one
temporarily stops attempting to complete a proof. However, ideas generated in SIT, during
an impasse in proof construction, are often not random, but related to that construction. We
believe that in proof construction SIT is influenced, or guided, by what we call local memory.
This is an impermanent collection of related memories that are not held in consciousness, but
can easily be brought to mind. Such local memory greatly aids reflection and can be maintained
over hours or days. It is not degraded by brief unrelated activities, but can be degraded
by other kinds of demanding reasoning. P3
178 A Dissociation Between Non-Conscious Orienting and Conscious Perception of
Peripheral Visual Objects Myoung Ju Shin, Anthony J. Lambert
(Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland CBD, New Zealand)
The present study compared rapid orienting in response to peripheral visual objects with
conscious perception of those objects. In the Orienting Task, participants oriented towards a
target using precues of high and low luminance contrast. In the Conscious Perception Task,
participants discriminated consciously between precues. Low and high contrast cues elicited
rapid orienting effects that were equal in magnitude, but conscious perception of low contrast
cues was much slower and less accurate. We interpret these results in terms of rapid non-