ABSTRACT
In many human endeavors, be it reading, playing a musical instrument, or finding a flaw in an experimental design, there is a fundamental transition between two modes of information processing. The first mode is relatively slow, sequential, subject controlled, and attention demanding. In the case of reading,
for example, the beginning reader may decode words letter by letter at rates near one letter per second (or about 10 words per minute). The attention demands of this slow, sequential process are illustrated by the fact that comprehension of
the conceptual content of a message read in this fashion may be negligible. The second mode is rapid, parallel, and automatic and makes few demands on attention. In the case of reading, for example, a skilled reader may process 100 characters per second (or 1,000 words per minute), and can do so with so few demands on attention that the conceptual comprehension of the message may be extremely high. These examples not only make it clear that the two processing modes differ considerably, but also point out the importance of understanding the mechanisms of learning by which the transition is made from the first mode to the second.
