ABSTRACT
Now that we have clarified our use of the terms performance, process, and explanation, we can distinguish between two types of research purposes that automaticity researchers have been concerned with. A first purpose is to diagnose the automatic nature of a task performance or a higher-level process. For example, skill-development researchers have tried to assess whether the performance on certain tasks has reached an automatic level. Affective priming researchers have tried to find out whether the affective priming effect (i.e., the f~lCt that responses to a target are hlster when preceded by a prime with the same valence; see Fazio, 2001, for a review) occurs automatically, and, by inference, whether the higher-level process of the evaluation of the primes can take place automatically. A second purpose is to explain automaticity in general. This pUlpose amounts to investigating which type of lower-level processes can lead to automatic performance or automatic higher-level processes, and can be rephrased as the purpose to diagnose the automatic nature of these lower-level processes. Researchers may manipulate the lower-level process that participants \vill use for a certain task, and they may then assess which type of lower-level process leads to automatic performance. For example, affective priming studies may be designed to encourage the retrieval of a valence label from memory (e.g., Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986) or, alternatively, the comparison between a desired and an actual state (e.g., Moors, De Rouwer, & Eelen, 2004). It may then be assessed which of these lower-level processes produces automatic affective priming effects. Both research purposes can be rephrased as being about diagnosis: the first concerns the diagnosis of the automatic nature of a task performance or a higher-level process, and the second concerns the diagnosis of the automatic nature of a lower-level process. The diagnosis of a phenomenon is usually closely related to the way in which it is defined. We therefore start ,vith an ovelView of different views (of the definition) of automaticity.
