Consciousness, emotion and cognition - how the mind works: an  (Page 3/4)

They mention that the impulsive system (which would be the unconscious) "operates in an automatic fashion and does not require cognitive resources or the allocation of attention". However, if your mind is doing something then in a way you are giving it attention. It really depends on how you define attention. They say it doesn't require cognitive resources or the allocation of attention because they mean conscious attention that people notice. And by 'cognitive resources' they mean conscious cognitive resources, which are more limited than unconscious resources.

Unconscious resources are more limited than cognitive resources because when you think consciously it requires more effort then if you just do something unconsciously. To make a process conscious you have to think about it more consciously and deliberately to yourself. If your mind is doing something by itself and it comes easily and naturally then you don't have to think about it as much and it is then more automatic, faster, and requires less resources. - However, that doesn't mean that you aren't paying attention to it. In experiences where basketball players get a 'hot hand' and experience what is termed 'flow' in psychology, then they are operating more unconsciously because the unconscious is more efficient than conscious processes. They can ignore things bothering them or disrupting a high performance better.

So when they say 'the impulsive system operates in an automatic fashion and does not require cognitive resources or the allocation of attention' they really mean it just doesn't require as much, if you think about how such processes would play out in reality - then they clearly use cognitive resources and the allocation of attention - the impulsive system never acts alone, conscious effort is always involved with any action, just not as much or maybe only a little when the impulsive or unconscious system is engaged.

So if a human mind is using explicit and implicit processes (by that I mean conscious and unconscious processes) how much attention is the person giving the process, and are they consciously or unconsciously directing it (in other words, how 'meta' or how much are they consciously thinking about their unconscious and conscious cognitive processes)? Here is Sun and Matthews on metacognition and dual-process theories:

• Thus, combining these two points of view, we may argue that both implicit and explicit cognitive processes are involved in metacognition. Reder (1987) took a view similar to this,in that she posited that a two-stage process was involved in judgment that invoked implicit similarity-based processes first and then a more explicit, deliberative, and analytical processthat examines individual dimensions of stimuli. Narens et al (1996) also appeared to indicate that metacognitive judgments (such as feeling of knowing) might be the result of both explicitand implicit processes, because such judgments are equally predictive of explicit and implicit memory.
• Norman and Shallice's (1986) view is more akin to our view here. They posited the coexistence of two kinds of processes: (1) fast, automatic processes, which are triggered bystimuli and are inflexible; (2) slow, conscious processes, which are independent of stimuli and are flexible. The former is used in skilled performance, while the latter deals mostly withnovel situations. In the former, different schemata can be triggered by stimuli and, through lateral inhibition, compete to be activated (which is termed "contention scheduling" byNorman and Shallice). In novel (nonroutine) situations, however, a supervisory attentional system decides on schemata selection and overrides automatic processes and their contentionscheduling. Shallice and Burgess (1991) divided supervisory processes into four cate- gories: (1) plan formulation and modification, (2) marker creation and triggering, (3) goalarticulation, and (4) memory organization. (These aspects are encompassed by our model.)
• Note that our view of top-down influences here is opposed to the view of Reder and Schunn (1996), which believes that metacognitive strategy selection cannot be taughtexplicitly. Our emphasis of bottom-up influences is also contrary to the view that metacognitive activities are necessarily implicit. Our view is that metacognitive processes areimplicit in a variety of circumstances: such as during initial learning of such skills through trial and error, when such processes are well practiced (so that no explicit deliberation isnecessary), or when cognitive load is high (so that explicit metacognitive processes may interfere with regular processes and degrade performance). In other circumstances, they maybecome explicit.