Cognitive Psychology

Unconscious Stimuli May Not be Processed to The Same Extent as Conscious Stimuli, But May Still Influence Our Conscious Behaviour

The unconscious mind is related to the hidden urges, feelings and thoughts of a person which they face in their entire life. The conscious mind consists of all the memories and wishes at a given moment. The unconscious reservoir on the other hand contains hidden unpleasant pain, stress or anxiety. Processing of both stimuli is not the same as the conscious stimuli are presented at a moment but the unconscious part of the brain is largely inaccessible (Robinson-Riegler and Robinson-Riegler, 2016). It has been observed that unconsciousness continues to affect the actions and behaviour of the conscious because our present desires and decisions are very much empowered by the previous experiences which are being stored in the part of the unconscious mind.

Describe Priming And Define What is Meant by Repetition Priming. What Factors Influence Semantic Activation And Whether Semantic Activation is Automatic

Priming is a kind of method where the influence of one stimulus greatly affects the response of another stimulus without any type of conscious purpose or guidance. Repetition priming is defined as improvements or regulation in the action response when the same type of stimuli is being presented continuously. The improvements can be analysed and monitored by the reaction time and the quality of the action. The factor which affects the semantic activation is spreading activation, and thus more priming at the lexical level is required (Todd, Hertwig and Hoffrage, 2015). The semantic activation is not automatic, thereby it does not take place when the attention is contiguously misdirecting.

Words With Different Types of Emotional Valence Might be Processed Differently Than Other Types of Words

Many findings have stated that emotional valence is expressed on the level of attractiveness to unpleasant stimuli. The emotional valence has been scaled in two axes by multidimensional scaling, the two axes are considered as a dimension, where one locates the emotion while the other is related to its arousal. Words like happiness and sadness are associated with emotional valence, such words affect the emotions and arousal level of an individual otherwise. On being happy the arousal state is high while when an individual is sad then the arousal status is low. Thus, it has been stated that words other than emotional valence are being processed differently (Ritter and et.al., 2017).

Spare Cognitive Resources or Attention Might Influence The Way we Process Stimuli

Spare cognitive attention is the remainder capacity of cognition once successful hearing is being achieved. Competitive noise reduction schemes or due to the use of some microphones the cognitive resources may get challenging. Only the part of the brain is attended to the spare cognitive resources, thus it has been observed that during the processing of stimulus at the time of outcome or behaviour associated with it, the action may get affected (Granhag, Vrij and Verschuere, 2015). As it is the left out or residual capacity of the brain the processing of stimuli is poor and the actions are being influenced depending upon the hearing.

Some People Are Simply More Affected by Certain Characteristics of Stimuli Than Others

There are some cases where a single stimulus affects one person more than the other one. The processing power as well as the attention capacity of every individual is different thus one type of stimulus can affect various individuals differently (Barber, 2015). Light stimuli may influence the person varyingly, one person can not tolerate excess light in the retina while there may be another individual who can perceive such light and remain unaffected. Thereby, various stimuli may affect different people accordingly.

Three Main Hypotheses That Relate to Our Two Experimental Manipulations And to the Notion of Individual Differences

Unconscious stimuli are not processed as conscious stimuli, but it has been observed that they may still determine our conscious behaviour is one of the hypotheses. The feelings or bad experiences which get stored in the unconscious world influence the present actions and thoughts of a person. Various types of words in emotional valence might be processed differently on two axes than other words is another hypothesis, which is correct and may be supported that anxiety and excitement are aroused and located differently. Another hypothesis is that the spare cognitive attention, the left-out ability of the cognitive power affects the style in which the stimulus will be processed. 

DISCUSSION

Summary of Findings

According to the report, it is suggested that the consciousness of a person is very much affected by the unconscious state of mind. It has also been found that few people are influenced more by a certain type of stimuli or by their further characteristics when compared to other individuals. Repetition priming is regarded as a way in which improvements can be made in the time of response and accuracy. Spare cognitive resource has positive or negative consequences in the processing of the stimulus. According to the study, people have different ways of acting on various stimuli, thus their processing style and thinking are different from others.

Relevance to The Literature

As per the report, emphasis has been laid on the conscious and unconscious mind and the way the processing of the stimuli takes place in various individuals depending upon such criteria. The parallel distributed processing model states that the neural network communicates so as to store the memory, such memory is then formed by altering the power of the connection among the units of the neural. Such a part stores the memory and makes the basis of consciousness and unconsciousness. The data thus, can be used to support the theories reflected in the findings. The response of every person may change on the same stimulus and can experience varying thoughts depending on their perception.

Limitations of The Study

Lack of early or prior research in the particular field has been considered as a limitation in the study. Such things lead to various problems in analysing and evaluating the result with reference to other concrete conclusions. The topic of research should have been more known so that more relevant agreements and discussions could be made. The research is a type of self-reported data, where every result is being added by a single investigator. Such practice may lead to few biases and may result in selective memory or exaggeration of the data. Selective memory is a process where a researcher may or may not remember the exact responses of the participants. Exaggeration is the way of presenting the final outcome in a more significant and enhanced style.

Also Read- Cognitive Behaviour Therapy in Clinical Psychology.

Conclusion

According to the above report, it can be concluded that cognitive psychology can be mentioned as the examination of mental processes such as reasoning, mental representation, conceptualisation and acquisition with respect to the inside outcome that occurs within sensational stimulus and aspects of the action. As per the report, it has been analysed that few individuals are much more stricken by definite action of the stimuli than others. The spare cognitive capacity might result in the fashion in which the stimuli will be processed. Words having contrary types of emotional valence might also be prepared otherwise when compared to other kinds of words. Priming is defined as the power of a single stimulation that extraordinarily affects the outcome of some other input without any guidance. It has been analysed that semantic activation is not automatic.

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