Cognitive Unconscious:
The positivistic point of view, at the beginning of the twentieth century, brought the behaviourism movement to the realm of psychology. The only thing that made psychology a science was focusing on observable behaviour and the environment. Even the conscious mind, which was subjective and unmeasurable did not count, let alone the unconscious mind, which was not even subjective!
In the middle of the twentieth century, the ideas of cognitive psychology started and flourished. Psychologists began to pay attention to unconscious cognitive processes. By the eighties the implicit, unconscious phenomena, together called the “cognitive unconscious” were already accepted by many psychologists.
The cognitive function of our mind can be divided into four categories: memory, perception, learning and thought. New findings in the field of cognitive psychology have convinced many investigators like John Kihlstrom that the cognitive part of our mind has an unconscious part, which is not merely a wastebasket or storage for unnecessary things that the mind doesn’t need at the moment. On the contrary, this part is very active and plays a role in our daily activities. This part of the mind has been called ” cognitive unconscious,” meaning that part of our cognitive apparatus has contents of which we are not aware. The “cognitive unconscious” is usually studied under four rubrics: implicit memory, implicit perception, implicit learning and implicit thought. Let’s take a closer look:
Implicit memory
We have two types of memories: one is the memory that we can access consciously. We can think about something and remember it. This access is voluntary and purposeful. The memory is associated with time and place and is usually highly specific. We can put the memory into words. This is called explicit memory; when we access this memory, we say that we remember something. However, today psychologists believe that we have another form of memory too. This form of memory is called implicit memory. This memory is unconscious, meaning that we are not aware of it and we can not access this memory consciously and with our intention. This memory is out of reach of our conscious mind. The contents of implicit memory usually do not have time and place; we don’t exactly know where and when in our lives it belongs. We can not easily put those contents into words. When we access this memory it is not like remembering; there is no sense of recall with it; we just know. So if we are unconscious of this memory how do we know that it exists? The answer is this type of memory affects our behaviour even if we are not consciously aware of that influence. For example, if we read a text once, then on the second time we will read the same text faster. While explicit memory is slow and effortful, access to implicit memory is fast and non-effortful. Belonging to the same category is procedural memory, which includes our skills and habits, and learning through classical conditioning. All these together are sometimes called non- declarative memory.
Implicit perception:
Implicit perception is a slightly more controversial topic. It means that the outcome of our daily perceptions may be either explicit or implicit. Explicit perception means that we perceive and we are aware of what we perceive. On the other hand, a lot of perceptions occur in the absence of our awareness. We see or hear without knowing that we have seen and heard. This is called implicit perception. Stimuli enter our neuro-sensory apparatus, are interpreted in mind, so they become meaningful but all outside our consciousness. We perceive things and understand them without being aware of that perception and understanding. Although the whole issue is very controversial, many psychological and neurological studies support the idea.
Implicit learning
Another example of unconscious cognition is implicit learning. Implicit learning is defined as learning without the consciousness being involved. It is unintended learning where knowledge about the environment is acquired through experience but without us being aware of its acquisition. Some investigators give a little bit of different definition. They say that in implicit learning, the input of information is conscious but the inferences occur at the unconscious level. The original examples are learning the native language by a child and also the process of socialization. Learning through conditioning can also be an example of implicit learning.
Implicit Thought
This is possibly the most controversial part of the discussion. Implicit thoughts are cognitive representations like images, beliefs, ideas, different from percepts and memories, which are formed without our awareness. The presence of this representation is not in the territory of the conscious mind. Maybe this is why some phenomena like “intuition” occur. Something we feel that we know without being aware of how we know.