A THEORETICAL OVERVIEW ON AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED COGNITIVE PROCESSES

The purpose of this chapter is to present a theoretical and up to date overview on automatic and controlled processes. Initially the definitions of automatic and controlled processes are provided. The main characteristics of automatic and controlled processes and the four meanings of automatic process are emphasised. The four meaning refers to the way in which some actions are carried out, to the way in which some actions are initiated without any conscious deliberation, to the orienting response and to the cases where tasks can be combined without any apparent interference. Main theoretical issues on the automatic/controlled processes are discussed. They concern the relationship between automatic and preattentive processes, conscious control, continuum of automatic and controlled processes, computational similarity and the fastness of automatic processes in comparison with controlled processes. Afterwards a brief history of the early development of scientific approaches to automatic and controlled processes is presented, followed by more in-depth examinations of the contemporary major strands in twentieth century research. In the concluding section some thoughts are offered about the relationship between scientific progress and everyday understanding of both processes.