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Reading and Calculating With Your Unconscious
lee1 writes "Using special techniques that present information to one eye while hiding the information from the conscious mind (by masking it with more distracting imagery presented to the other eye), researchers have shown two new and very unexpected things: we can read and understand short sentences, and we can perform multi-step arithmetic problems, entirely unconsciously. The results of the reading and calculating are available to and influence the conscious mind, but we remain unaware of their existence. While we have known for some time that a great deal of sensory processing occurs below the surface and affects our deliberative behavior, it was widely believed until now that the subconscious was not able to actually do arithmetic or parse sentences."
Like when my wife insists that we had an entire conversation about taking out the trash while I was playing a video game.
They know how it works.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My students can't even do this consciously. :)
I'm not sure their method for suppressing consciousness is as locked down as they believe it is. Someone with a near-eidetic memory could take a "snapshot" of the static image in one eye, and hold it in conscious memory even while dealing with the images in the other eye. (Frankly, video games have taught us how to do this sort of stuff quite well.)
And even if this is the case, I'm not sure what, if any, useful information we can extra from the study, other than "this is cool."
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Nope, 'subconcious' is a Freudian concept that refers to deeper currents of conciousness, well beyond what can be known or observable and such phenomena as dreams are ascribed to this. Unconcious may alternatively be described as 'inattentive' i.e. something you do without being conciously aware you are doing it (e.g. something that is well practiced such as signing your name, may be largely 'unconcious' whereas sketching a fruit-bowl might draw far more concious resources if you are not proficient in that area)
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
This is a dupe: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/13/0330209/evidence-for-unconscious-math-language-processing-abilities
dupity dupity dupe
dupe dupity dupity dupe dupe
dupe dupity dupity dupe dupe
dupity dupity dupe
That's dupe: evidence for unconscious math language processing abilities
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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worst analogy ever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind#Criticism
also, it's more like an autonomous hardware subsystem, firing an interrupt
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
Looks pretty consistent with the kind of view of human conciousness, as forms the core of Peter Watts' "Blindsight". The body can do most anything without being conscious of it, we just put a rubber stamp on all the actions and call them our own.
If the subject interests you I highly recommend reading the book. It's available free from author's homepage: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
is just a test of memory, not reasoning.
In psycho-linguistics, it has always been understood that parsing is an sub-conscious, automatic process. Parsing sentences consciously is extremely slow, as every 2nd language learner knows, and we can do it at a speed of about 4 words per second without any problem. But the experiments as described in the extract do not warrant the conclusions. Effects of lexical priming have been known for a looooong time (since the 1930s, I think), and it remains to be seen if none of the results can be attributed to any other kind of information that precise computation of the arithmetic problem or perfect understanding of the sentence.
There's a lot of cognitive science I could ramble on about here, but the fact is that the conclusion stated in the summary is obvious to anyone who has studied brain function in detail.
Putting aside the debate over whether or not consciousness is an epiphenomenon, just about the only part of thought that we are consciously aware of is information that takes a trip through short-term memory. Everything else is in dedicated (innate or due to learning) circuitry that just computes what we've learned and either spoon-feeds our consciousness with the results or directly interacts with the sensory and motor systems. (In other words, we are only consciously aware of punctuations in multi-step processes.)
Consider when you first learn a new skill. At that time, it's entirely conscious, because we have to pay special attention to every step. Like when we're new to cooking and baking some new recipe, we consciously reason over each step in preparation. But when we've gotten really expert at something ("unconsciously competent"), most of it goes on automatic. We don't think so much about the steps; we just execute them, and our conscious mind can wander off on something else. By that point, many of us have forgotten what we went through when learning and generally have a challenge explaining how we're doing what we're doing.
Other examples: Playing an instrument -- really experienced players practice so much that the motor system is completely on automatic, while the conscious mind is (often to a very limited extent) focusing on the sheet music and timing reference (conductor or percussion). Reading radiology images -- an experienced doctor can show you a lesion they've observed, and after it's pointed out, you can sorta see it, but finding it in the first place is a well-honed skill that can be very difficult to explain; how do you tell that that one extremely vague splotch is a lesion while one nearby is normal?
The really interesting bit is this: Most people can explain more or less how they do something. But none of that is from direct access to how we ACTUALLY process the information. Rather, our explanation about how we THINK we do something is based on conscious theories we construct to explain behaviors we've observed in others and ourselves. In other words, our "skills" and our "'mental models' of our skills" are stored in entirely different parts of our memory.
It's also interesting to study teachers. Really good teachers (particularly on subjects more abstract than what you get in grade school, which are mostly rote learning from books) are people who have some combination of a good memory about how they learned something and a really good takent for self-observation when they perform a skill (i.e. a good conscious mental model of their otherwise unconscious skill).
The next level up is teachers who are good at teaching how to teach. :)
So, to address the article here: Our unconscious minds can read and do math, because the unconscious mind is what already does those things anyway. (Once you're past elementary school.)
I'm constantly bewildered by the inclination of humans to assign, for various reasons, less than extraordinary capabilities (such as 'not possible to do arithmetic') to such faculties of our bodies that run things like intercellular communication and maintain proper heartbeats and fuel/oxygen mix ratios etc. Why would the framework (the thing that contains all the rules) be something less than that which it produced? SMH... Now if we could begin to look at the sum total of processes as being derivations of both unconscious as well as subconscious, perhaps we could see that the end points are only small parts of the whole to which we could be *shrugs* 'using' should we acknowledge it's existence and learn to work with it as well...i've seen Freud mentioned in a couple comments...unification of the Id, Ego and Superego, by preventing one from looking down on the others...
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
Submitter here. It seems to me that the commenter thinks that "unconscious" is an adjective and that I left out the noun. But it is indeed a noun, as a quick trip to any dictionary published after 1912 will confirm.
maybe this is part of why some folks can look at a pattern and then KNOW that say A B C D F G H J is "missing" parts (and what those parts are).
The geek thing of What happens if we do THIS can also be included in this
(and YesHOLD MY BEER and watch this is NOT part of this)
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Your use of "unconscious" was perfectly acceptable. Or at least it was when the story first appeared:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/13/0330209/evidence-for-unconscious-math-language-processing-abilities
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
We have several "mental organs", performing different functions. Lumping them all together as "the Subconscious" retards our understanding of thought processes.
"Subconscious" is not a Freudian concept. Freud always spoke of the unconscious ("das Unbewußte"). He explicitly opposed the notion of a "subconscious" ("Unterbewußtsein"):
translated by Brill as
or here:
translated by James Strachey as
Sounds like an S.E.P. field to me...
I can do this. I remember as a kid having to write out the numbers 1-100 in a 10x10 grid so I just started doing it and got almost immediately distracted thinking about something else and the next thing I know it's done, sort of. For some reason, I managed to skip a few numbers here and there and had to rub it out and do it again, painstakingly trying not to get distracted.
Same with the maths question sheets they used to give us in primary school. Done with barely a conscious thought, but riddled with off-by-one and forgot-to-carry-the-seven errors.
I can do this, just not very well.
Looks pretty consistent with the kind of view of human consciousness, as forms the core of Peter Watts' "Blindsight".
I just realized that the main charter in Blindsight is named "Siri", same as the Apple search app. Although, considering that his book came out in 2006, it would seem it pre-dates the Apple term.
I didn't know it was a dupe. And I have some sympathy with the view that "unconscious" makes an awkward noun, correct or not, now that I take a hard look at it. It reminds me of the Uncola.
We have various sensory inputs from all over our body that give us a very incomplete view of our bodies current state. I think it best to think of consciousness as our sense of what's going on in our brains -- not the boss of what's going on -- but an incomplete sense of what's going on. From this point of view, if the conscious mind is distracted it doesn't prevent other parts from still working.
Come on, this is not new knowledge. We all, or at least a lot of people, are well aware that if you leave the radio on at night tuned to a talk station, the content of the talk gets worked into your dreams.
So what does that mean? Well, Unconscious? Check. Parsing sentences? Check. Integrating those the semantic content of those sentences into your dreams into the "plot" of your dream-or in other words "problem solving" - check.
On the last point- yes, it is problem solving. Getting the meaning out of a stream of sentences is the kind of problem solving that's so sophisticated, a computer can't yet do it. A computer can't read the paper and understand the it's meaning or listen the a radio broadcast and understand it's meaning . Intelligence agencies would love to have a computer that can read the world's papers and automatically process their contents. The technology isn't there yet, which is another way of saying that the problem isn't solved, so that's problem solving in your sleep, not to mention the problem solving of working a narrative around what it is your unconscious mind is listening to.
Is this story from some grad student trolling for fame ?
His basic argument is that prior to some point (and that 'point' is actually a slow shift across generations) we were not conscious in the sense that we now mean, that is reflectively aware of our inner life as we process, and interact with, the world around us. Since the ability to perform complex tasks is usually associated with that 'reflective awareness', Jaynes takes quite a bit of time covering experiences and experiments which show the range of things which we can do entirely unconsciously. Some of the most eerie are the experiments done with epilepsy patients who have had their Corpus Callasum cut. He details multiple experiments showing how the side of the brain without strong language skills is able to understand and respond without the other half knowing what it has done. The subject having done something of minor complexity is unable to articulate it and may even deny having done it.
He further argues that even now, with our 'integrated' awareness, much of what we consider deeply human capabilities such as solving a complex problem whose answer is not deduced but arrived at creatively, is actually done unconsciously and only afterwards is the solution presented to 'conscious' thought as an already solved problem. This sounds precisely like what was described in the article.
Here, the criticism is more illogical than the theory itself. "Mind" IS a computer, because it computes. I am a traveller because I travel. What is the big deal there?
Some people do not like the qualitative connotations it creates, but they are simply illogical.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
So? Traveller is still a person/thing that travels. Computer is still a person/thing that computes. Uncharted notwithstanding.
Take the Chinese room objection to the theory. The person / room / books combination conducts the conversation. Qualitatively one may not be comfortable with the idea of a system conducting a conversation, but one either needs to define "conversation" to exclude non-persons from conducting it; or accept that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Until that is, you go to cook the duck
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
Cooked quacking duck?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
not if it's been cooked it isn't :)
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
So it is outside the scope of discussion when discussion involves quacking ducks.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Since we are setting parameters, I think it would also be wise to specify that ducks eligible for this metaphor must be able to fly, since only a flying duck a can migrate, and therefore be considered a traveller!
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
* or duck-like entity
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
No, your reading comprehension is poor. Duck is not described as traveller. And even if it were, walking and swimming are also forms of traveling.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Do let me know if you have something relevant to add on this subject.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.