ABSTRACT
First, cognitive psychology now embraces a distinction between automatic and controlled processing (e.g. Hasher and Zacks, 1979, 1984; Schneider and Shifftin, 1977; Shiffrin and Schneider, 1977; for updates, see Bargh, 1989; Logan, 1989; Shiffrin, 1988). Whether they are innate or routinized by extensive practice, automatic processes are inevitably engaged by specific inputs, independent of any intentionality on the part of the subject, and they cannot be controlled or terminated before they have run their course. We have no conscious awareness of their operation, and we have little or no awareness of the information which they process. All that enters awareness is the final product of the automatic process. Thus, automaticity represents unconscious processing in the strict sense of the term: we have no introspective access to automatic procedures, or their operations; these can be known only indirectly, by inference.
