Overview
Implicit cognition is everything one does and learns unconsciously or without any awareness that one is doing it. An example of implicit cognition could be when a person first learns to ride a bike: at first they are aware that they are learning the required skills. After having stopped for many years, when the person starts to ride the bike again they do not have to relearn theHistory
Implicit cognition was first discovered in the year of 1649 by Descartes in his ''Implicit learning
Studies on implicit learning
A study was conducted with amnesiac patients in an attempt to demonstrate that amnesiac patients that were unable to learn a list of words or pictures when their performance was tested were able to complete or put together fragmented words and incomplete pictures. This was found to be true as the patients were able to perform better when asked to complete words or pictures. A possible explanation for this could be thatImplicit social relations
Implicit cognition also plays a role in social cognition. People tend to see objects and individuals as more encouraging or acceptable the more often that people are exposed to them. An example includes the False-fame Effect. Graf and Masson (1993) conducted a study where they showed participants a list with both famous and non-famous names. When it was shown around people were able to recall the famous names more than the non-famous names initially, but after about a 24-hour delay participants began to associate the non-famous names with famous people. This supports implicit cognition because the participants began to unconsciously associate the non-famous names with famous people. Although the process is unconscious, implicit cognition influences how people view each other as well as their interactions with one another. People tend to view those who look alike as belonging together or to similar groups and associate them with the social groups that existed in their high school years. These groups represented different relations between the students and were made up of students who were perceived as having similarities among each other. A study was conducted to see the amount of distance that participants put between individuals given certain circumstances. The participants were asked to place figures of individuals where they thought the figures should be standing given certain circumstances. It was found that people typically place men and women close to each other, to make little families formed with the figures of a woman, a man, and children. The participants did the same when asked to show friends and/or acquaintances, the two figures were placed relatively close to one another rather than if they were asked to represent strangers. When asked to represent strangers the participants placed the figures far apart. There are two parts to the view of social relations that is liking relations where the ultimate goal is to be together, then there is the disliking relation view which is separation from the person. An example of this could be when someone is walking down a hallway and see someone whom they know and like that person is more likely to wave and say hello to them. On the other hand, say the person they see is someone whom they dislike, their response will be the opposite as they try to either avoid them or get away from them as quickly as possible showing the separation between the two of them. There are two views to the theory of social relation, one of them is that people are out to mainly seek dominance of those around them, while the other view is that people mainly see the relations as either belonging or not belonging or liking and disliking on another. It is seen that males mainly seek dominance against one another as they are competitive and looking to outdo one another. Females on the other hand it is seen that women perceive their social views and values as more of the belonging or liking scale in terms of their closeness to one another. Implicit cognition not only involved how people view each other but also how they view themselves. This means that our own image is constructed from what others see of us rather than our own views. The way that we view ourselves is from what others see us as, or from the times that we compare ourselves to other people. The way that this plays a role in implicit cognition is because of all of these actions people do unconsciously, or they are unaware that they are making this decision. Men do not consciously seek to be dominant over one another as women do not consciously arrange their social views or values in terms of their closeness. These are each thing that people do without their conscious knowledge of these actions, which ties in with implicit cognition.Implicit attitudes
Implicit attitudes (also called automatic attitudes) are mental evaluations that occur without the awareness of the person. Although there is a debate about whether these can be measured fully, attitudes have been assessed with theImplicit behaviors
There are scenarios when we act on something and then think back about handling it in a different situation or manner. That is implicit cognition coming into play, the mind will then go based on ethical and similar situations when interacting with a certain thought. Implicit cognition and its automated thought process allow a person to decide something out of impulse. It is often defined as an involuntary process where tasks are easily absent of consciousness. There are plenty of factors that influence behaviors and thought processes. Such as social learning, stigmas, and two major aspects of implicit and explicit cognition. Implicit on one hand is obtained through social aspects and association, while explicit cognition is gained through propositional attitudes or beliefs of certain thoughts, Implicit cognition can be incorporated with a mixture of attention, goals, self-association, and at times even motivational processes. Researchers have used different methods to test these theories of behavior's correlation with implicit cognition. Using Implicit Association Tests (ITA's) is a method that is significantly used, according to Fazio & Olsen (2003) and Richetin & Richardson (2008). Since published, approximately ten years or so, it has been widely used in influencing research on implicit attitudes. Implicit cognition is a process based on automatic mental interpretations. It's what a person really thinks, yet is not consciously aware of. Behavior is then affected, usually causing negative influences, both theoretical and empirical reasons presume that automatic cognitive processes are contributed to aggressive behaviors. Impulse behaviors are often created without awareness. Negativity is a characteristic of implicit cognition since it is an automated response. Explicit cognition is rarely used when trying to discover the behavior of one thought process. Researchers again use IAT's to determine one's thoughts and how a person incorporates these automatic processes, findings consider that implicit cognition may direct what behaviors a person may choose when facing extreme stimuli. For example, death can be perceived as positive, negative, or a combination of the two. Depending on the attributes of death, it can include a general perspective or a "me" attribute. implied that implicit association with death and or suicide initiates a final process when deciding how to cope with these extreme measures. Self-harm is another characteristic associated with implicit cognition. Because although we may think of it, it is controlled subconsciously. IAT's showed that there was a stronger correlation between implicit cognition and death/suicide than self-harm. The idea of pain may influence a person to think twice, while suicide may seem quick, thus the automatic process can show how effective this negative behavior and implicit cognition come hand in hand. Automated processes don't allow a person to thoroughly create a conscious choice, therefore creating a negative influence to behavior. Another negative behavior that can be associated with implicit cognition is depression. Whether a person takes a positive or negative outlook on a certain situation can produce if a person will be associated with depression. It is easier to determine an implicit mindset simply because it is outside of awareness. Implicit processes are considered critical when determining a person's reactions to a certain schema. Implicit cognition is often immediately affective towards a person's reaction. Implicit cognitions also consisted of negative schemas that included hidden cognitive frameworks and activation of stress. Awareness was often misinterpreted and implicit cognition emerged because of these negative schemas. Behaviors merged through implicit cognition involve a variety of addictive behaviors, problematic thinking, depression, aggression, suicide, death, and other negative factors. Certain life situations add to this schema, whether it be stressful situations, sudden, or anything along these lines, aspects of implicit cognition are used and evaluated. Implicit cognition can also be associated with mental illness and the way thoughts are processed. Automatic stigmas and attitudes may anticipate other cognitive and behavioral tendencies. A person with mental illness may be correlated with a guilt-related, self-associated personality.Dovidio, J, F., et al., (2002) & Greenwald, A, G., et al., (2009) Because of these associations it may be managed outside one's own control and awareness, showing how implicit cognition is affected. However, a dual process can be assessed within implicit and explicit cognition. An agreement between the two thought processes may be an issue, explicit may not be in contact with implicit, therefore causing more of a problem. Mental illness can include both implicit and explicit attitudes, however, implicit self-concepts gave more negative consequences when dealing with mental illness. Much of implicit problems happened to be associated with alcohol, however, this isn't the goal in order to describe a mental process and implicit cognition. The most widely influenced mental illness in association with implicit cognition would be Schizophrenia. Since a person with this illness has a problem detecting what is real and what is not, implicit memory is often used with these patients. However, since it cannot really be detected if it is emotional, mental, or a combination of both some aspects of this illness is usually exercised uninterrupted, and unconsciously. Since schizophrenia is widely varied and has different characteristics, we cannot quite measure the outcome of implicit cognition.Definition
Implicit cognition refers to perceptual, memory, comprehension, and performance processes that occur through unconscious awareness. For example, when a patient is discharged after surgery, the effects of the anesthesia can cause abnormal behaviors without any conscious awareness. According to Wiers et al. (2006), some scholars argue implicit cognition is misinterpreted and could be used to improve behaviors while others highlight the dangers of it. Research studies have shown implicit cognition is a strong predictor for several issues like substance abuse, misconduct, and mental disorders. These inherent thoughts are influenced by early adolescent experiences primarily a negative impact from culture. Adolescents who experience a rough childhood early on develop low levels of self-esteem. Therefore, the cognition to act dangerously is an oblivious development. Research for implicit cognition has started to grow especially within mental disorders.In mental disorders
Schemas are used to interpret the functions involved when individuals would make sense of their surroundings. This cognition happens through an explicit process of recalling an item routinely or an implicit process that is outside conscious awareness control. A recent study suggests individuals who have experienced a difficult upbringing develop schemata of fear as well as anxiety and will react almost immediately when they feel threatened. People who are anxious predominantly focus on any peril-related stimuli since they are hyper-vigilant. For example, an anxious individual who is about to cross the street at the same time a car drives to a stop sign. The anxious person will automatically assume the driver will not stop. This is recognition of threat through a semantic process that instantaneously occurs. Ambiguous cues are viewed as a threat since there is no relevant knowledge to make sense of. People will have a difficult time understanding and will respond negatively. This kind of behavior can explain how implicit cognition may be an influence on pathological anxiety. The ideas of psychotic patients who have low self-esteem are prone to more serious illnesses. This concept was examined through both implicit and explicit perspectives by measuring the self-esteem of paranoia and depression patients. Previous research suggests that negative implicit cognition is not the symptom of depression and paranoia, but it is an antecedent for the onset. Current research proposes that high implicit self-esteem is linked to less paranoia. It is imperative for patients who have low self-esteem to become more overt about these situations. Another study found a substantial association between adverse self-questioning in implicit cognition and depression. People who do not think highly of themselves are more likely to be depressed because of this involuntary implicit learning. Implicit cognition is another influential predictor for bipolar disorder and unipolar disorder. The research proposes patients with bipolar disorder show more common implicit and depressive self-referencing than unipolar patients. Implicit cognition plays a strong role in patients with the both bipolar and unipolar disorder. These patients have dysfunctional self-schemata, which is viewed as a vulnerability for potential illnesses. Patients who have this vulnerability usually do not seek mental assistance which can later become more problematic to treat. Bipolar disorder patients with low implicit self-esteem are more defensive. This is an unconscious reaction to be manic protective when they feel threatened in any way. Since the growing research of implicit cognition is associated with abnormalities, researchers attempted to find a connection between implicit neuroticism and schizophrenia. Indeed, there was a correlation; participants with schizophrenia were high in implicit neuroticism and low in implicit extraversion when compared to people who were mentally healthy. Participants were given questionnaires that ask personality questions such as "I enjoy being the center of attention". Implicit cognition constitutes low levels of extraversion because these participants are known to avoid any coping. Schizophrenia patients and healthy individuals differ in associative representation pertaining to themselves in neuroticism features. People who are schizophrenic develop implicit learning, meaning they have an error-free learning style so they never take feedback from anyone else. Research on suicide can be a difficult process because suicidal patients are commonly covert about their intentions to avoid hospitalization. An implicit cognition associated with self-task was applied in one experiment to unveil any suspicious behavior of people who might attempt suicide. This study found patients who were released from mental hospitals showed significant implicit association to attempt suicide. The Implicit Association Task would predict whether a patient was likely to attempt suicide depending on their response. An individual's implicit cognition may lead to behavior to best cope with stress. This behavior may be suicide, substance abuse, or even violence. However, implicit association with death will show those most at risk for attempting suicide because this individual is looking for the best solution for ending their stress.Task performed
Implicit cognition is measured in different ways to find the most accurate outcomes. The task used for patients with anxiety disorders was a modified Stroop task to observe attention biases in anxiety. A participant's reaction time was measured by the reported color of each word. Participants would name the color for each risk-relevant word and risk-irrelevant word and depend on the color of each word might slow the reaction time. Colors like red were used to see if anxious participants would have a slower reaction time. These colors are known asSee also
*Notes
References
* *Ione, AmyExternal links