1 UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES INFLUENCING LEARNING
Bettina Davou University of Athens
ABSTRACT: This paper reviews recent experimental evidence on the active involvement of non-conscious processes in human functioning and examines the contribution of this evidence to understanding learning. The experimental concept of “unconscious processing” is compared to the psychoanalytic notion of the “unconscious” and some relationships between the two concepts are pointed out. The general idea stemming from experimental research is that in parallel with what goes on at the conscious level, non-conscious dynamic processes have a very strong impact both in the process and the outcome of learning. Information, which in milliseconds
is
non-consciously assessed
as
threatening
to
the
learner’s
psychological balance may be disguised or blocked from further processing, therefore affecting the learner’s educational competence. The educational material, relationship or atmosphere may provoke non-conscious emotions, attitudes and intentions, which “inflate” cognition and can affect the individual’s current processing of information in various (inhibiting or enhancing) ways. By carefully observing the points where the individual learner is blocked in the “here and now”, the teacher or therapist may deduce useful information on the issues that may unconsciously inhibit learning.
KEYWORDS: Unconscious processing, automatic processing, implicit learning, emotional unconscious, learning inhibitions
2
INTRODUCTION Learning has been a central area of study and research in psychology, education and other disciplines. At a very basic level it can be defined as the process through which knowledge is acquired and change is produced, however hundreds of more sophisticated definitions have been proposed, depending either on the approach followed within a discipline or on attempts to compare and synthesize different theories and ideas (as for example in the classic book of Hilgard & Bower, 1966). In the field of academic psychology and education, cognitive approaches to learning emerged in the ‘60s to replace behaviourist approaches that had been dominant for years. In Bruner’s words, this was “…an all-out effort to establish meaning as the central concept of psychology -not stimuli and response, not overtly observable behavior, not biological drives and their transformation, but meaning”. However, as Bruner points, very early on “…emphasis began shifting from “meaning” to “information”, from the construction of meaning to the processing of information” (1990: 2-5). By adopting ideas from logics, linguistics and computer science, the cognitive approach focused on the way people process information mainly under controlled experimental conditions (eg. Hunt, 1971, 1975; Sternberg, 1980); this led to the development of pure “mathematical” models of mind, well documented by experimental research. During the past decade the revival of interactionist theories draw attention to the fact that experimental findings are not adequate to provide a meaningful explanation of learning in every day-life, where we have to face a learner who has a personal history, interacts with other people and the environment and who must survive within this environment. Entwistle’s work (1985, 1988), for example, considers the many personal attitudes (social, cognitive and emotional) of the individual learner, while Monique Boekaerts (1987, 1996) has successfully made the “person in situation” approach central to educational research, by pointing to the contribution of motivation and emotions to learning. In comparison to information processing models, these approaches are richer in their view of human learning and introduced more elaborate, in-depth concepts, as for example “learning styles” and “strategies” (Howe, 1984; Pask, 1976), “approaches
3 to learning” and “levels of understanding” (e.g. Entwistle, 1988, 1991), “study skills” (e.g. Hamblin, 1981) etc., by concentrating mainly on what Frederiksen (1984) calls “controlled processing”, that is, processing which requires the learner’s concentration of attention and control of the information to be learned. However, what still appears to be missing, in order to arrive at a more global view of learning, is the systematic study and consideration of thought processes, which though not in the awareness or under the control of the learner, remain active and influence the process and outcome of learning. That is, of processes which in most cognitive and experimental psychological research have been labeled “automatic” (Frederiksen, 1984), “subliminal” (e.g. Erderlyi, 1974), “implicit” (e.g. Underwood & Bright, 1996) or “autobiographic very long term memories” (Wegman, 1985). In other words, what has not yet been acknowledged or given appropriate consideration in educational research –though systematically inferred from observations in clinical (mainly psychoanalytic) practice- is the impact of nonconscious material on every aspect of the individual’s life. Nevertheless, once “affective predispositions” of the learner (Child, 1985:18) or “motivation control” (e.g. Boekaerts, 1993:379) have been re-introduced in educational research, we may be only one step away from considering (or re-considering) the contribution of nonconscious processes involved in learning.
WITHOUT THE LEARNER’S AWARENESS AND CONTROL
The Return of the Unconscious in Academic Research
Bowlby (1981: 44-74) was probably the first psychoanalytically oriented scholar to attempt to incorporate cognitive experimental findings in order to explain unconscious processes and the way they may become manifested in the individual’s pathology and behaviour. By adopting an information processing approach, he analysed the mechanisms of defence involved in loss, and suggested that in specific cases, individuals may carry out defensive exclusion of information, that is, exclusion from further conscious processing of information of certain specific types, which may threaten the person’s psychological balance. Bowlby argued that most selective
4 exclusion of information is both necessary and adaptive, since it protects from overloading one’s mental capacities and from having one’s attention constantly distracted. Bowlby (1985) showed, in a very systematic way, that when information, which is excessively charged with negative emotions enters our cognitive system, the individual tends to “shut it away”, that is to block it from further processing. And though the selective exclusion of information of particular types may be adaptive in certain adverse circumstances during childhood, the persistent exclusion of the same kind of information may become maladaptive when during adolescence or adult life the situation changes. Bowlby’s effort was to utilize a new model in order to interpret in more “updated”, epistemologically “correct” and experimentally accurate terms, psychoanalytic mechanisms of defence. In this way, he attempted to provide extra documentation to clinically observed behaviour. It is only one step further from this to assume that when the learner anticipates that a certain category of information may be emotionally distracting, he or she will tend to keep it out of “mind” or if this attempt proves unsuccessful, to block it from further processing, including the advanced cognitive processing required for learning. The learner thus appears unable to perceive certain types of information and/or to elaborate on it in order for learning to be achieved. In trying to protect oneself from emotionally painful or difficult to handle information, one may tend either to select only fragments of information that is “safe” but not adequate for learning, or to block it completely from entering one’s conscious mind. The interesting idea that this argument introduces to the study of learning, is that all this may occur without the learner’s awareness and/or conscious intention. The fact that learning, as all human behaviour, is affected by phantasies, motives or feelings which are not always conscious, has long been observed in clinical practice and reported by psychoanalytically oriented educators, psychologists or psychotherapists (e.g. Beaumont, 1998; Caspari, 1986; Davou, 1992), and methods of intervention which deal with both the conscious and the non conscious aspects of learning have been successfully implemented (as is, for example, educational therapy which Irene Caspari introduced in the ‘70s). Little is however done in that direction in educational research. This may be partly due to the lack of communication between clinicians and researchers (each have their own “entrenched” journals, conferences and general academic exchanges), but mainly it appears to be due to the different epistemological positions that guide their enquiry.
5 It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore at length epistemological arguments. However, a fundamental difference appears to be that while clinicians use a model (e.g. psychoanalytic) to interpret the individual’s naturally occurring mental processes and behaviour, researchers attempt to create the circumstances that generate particular processes and behaviour, in order to isolate cause-effect relationships. Obviously, the latter utilize “control of variables” as a protection (or defence?) against the uncertainty inherent in theoretical interpretations. Especially in the era of post-modernity, where there may exist as many interpretations as models, “control” of the circumstances that generate behaviour may provide some sort of certainty that we understand life and the world. A second, but equally important reason for which researchers appear uninterested in the study of unconscious processes is that the various paradigms which became dominant through the history of psychology had a very bad relationship with concepts that could not be “observed”, including the unconscious. Erdelyi (1985: 57-60) presents a detailed account on the “difficult existence of the unconscious within psychology”, and points out that while psychological research often came across processes which indicated “…Freud’s distinction between the unconscious on one hand and the conscious or preconscious on the other…”, new terms were usually introduced (i.e. ‘automatic’, ‘inaccessible’, ‘pre-attentive’) which showed that there was a “continued nervousness on the part of experimental psychology about making its peace with the unconscious”, mainly because “the psychoanalytic unconscious, it is usually claimed, carries excess theoretical baggage to which the typical modern investigator does not wish to give the appearance of subscribing”. In the last decade, this nervousness tended to give its place gradually to more fertile exchanges and discussions, especially between psychoanalytically oriented clinicians and cognitive psychologists. As Weinberger and Weiss (1997: 23) point out “with the demise of behaviorism and the rise of the so-called cognitive revolution, unconscious processes are once again in fashion in the academic community”, though what is being termed as “unconscious” in cognitive psychology cannot completely coincide with the various psychoanalytic notions of the unconscious (see e.g. Ellenberger, 1970). This has generated an argument about whether what is postulated as unconscious in cognitive research has indeed the properties of the unconscious as described by Freud either in the topographical or in the structural
6 model. Some scholars have tried to find the connections. Erdelyi (1984) has devoted a whole book to interpreting the psychoanalytic theory in cognitive terms, Wegman (1985) has attempted to translate Freud’s theory of abreaction into what he calls a “computer model” (1985: 275-6) that takes consideration of the cognitive concept of reappraisal, Oatley (1990) has offered a cognitive interpretation of the Case of Dora, Stein and Young (1997) have used cognitive schema theory to provide a more sophisticated explanation of the mechanisms involved in repression, and Cloitre (1997) utilized cognitive experimental results in order to build a model for the study of traumatic memories of early-life abuse. While the debate about whether processes indicated by cognitive research can be termed “unconscious” or whether the psychoanalytic unconscious can be understood by means of cognitive conceptions still remains open, research on mind processes that are carried out without the individual’s awareness and/or control has flourished in the last decade. If we consider these findings in educational theory and research, our view of learning will change. There is now strong evidence that in parallel with what goes on at the conscious level, dynamic processes beyond create a very strong impact both in the process and the outcome of learning.
At the
moment, and for as long as the terminology debate remains open, it may be academically safer to call these processes non-conscious (instead of either pre- or un-conscious). This, however, does not devalue their significance for every aspect of human functioning, including learning.
Some Experimental Findings on the Effect of Non-conscious Processing With a very stimulating article entitled ‘Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences’, Zajonc (1980) initiated a debate (which for some scholars still remains open) about which general function, cognition or emotion, takes precedence in the processing of information. Zajonc suggested that many kinds of information are nonconsciously evaluated for their emotional significance, before they proceed for further cognitive elaboration by the individual. In that article, he published for the first time results from a series of experiments based on what was called the “mere exposure effect”. Accordingly, when individuals are presented for a short period of time with a combination of already known and novel stimuli (i.e. Chinese ideograms) and are
7 subsequently asked to report which ones they like better, they tend to show a preference for the stimuli they already know. This phenomenon led Zajonc to conclude that mere exposure (familiarity) is enough for people to generate preferences. This finding in itself would have been perhaps all too obvious if another series of experiments had not shown that the mere exposure effect holds, even when old and new stimuli are presented subliminally; that is, for very few milliseconds, so that subjects feel they did not have enough time to read them and cannot report whether they recognized them or not. The subliminal mere exposure effect has since been repeated in many different laboratories, and the idea that preferences can be formed by stimuli that have not entered the individual’s consciousness is now confirmed by extensive experimental research (Bornstein, 1992). Zajonc’s argument is supported also by evidence from neurobiology. Studying the emotions, LeDoux (1998) has produced evidence that cognitive and emotional functions are of a different nature and they appear to derive from two independent systems, which interact continuously. Thus, he distinguishes emotional from cognitive processing of information and introduces the concept of “emotional unconscious” to describe the processing of information that has emotional significance and takes place without the awareness of the individual. On the basis of neurobiological evidence, Zajonc suggests that every stimulus perceived by the individual is almost immediately (within 200 milliseconds) interpreted for its valence (positive or negative). Thus, even before one is aware that he has perceived it, a stimulus has the power to influence not only emotional and cognitive processing that follows, but also more stable attributes of the individual such as self-esteem. In his laboratory it was found that a group of psychology graduate students rated their own research ideas worse if, before making the judgment they were subliminally exposed to a scowling photo of Zajonc, who had a reputation of being a tough evaluator1. Using a modification of the mere exposure technique, Bornstein (1992) created a complicated experimental design, which he applied with the help of two accomplices (A and B) who were unknown to the individuals who participated in the study. The first group of participants was exposed subliminally to the picture of A, This information was derived from an extended article devoted on Zajonc’s work. It presents a summary of his mort important findings and theoretical points, as well as extended interviews with Zajonc and his colleagues, and was published in the journal of the American Psychological Association (Monitor, September 1998, pp. 12-13). Zajonc’s ideas developed after four decades of research on emotions and subliminal perception. 1
8 while the second group similarly exposed to the picture of B. Then, each participant was asked to take part in a discussion with A and B, where the three of them had to read poetry and decide on the gender of a poet who was kept unknown. Since the pictures of either A or B were shown subliminally, participants were not aware that they had seen either of the two accomplices. According to the directions of the experimenter, at a certain point during the discussion A and B started to argue on the gender of the writer, and they had to continue arguing until the subject would intervene to solve their debate. The important finding in this experiment was that participants systematically tended to take the side of either A or B, depending on whose picture they were initially exposed to; that is, they tended to agree with the person who was non-consciously familiar to them. After an extended review of related research, Bornstein arrives at the conclusion that the mere exposure effect is stronger when stimuli are presented for milliseconds than when they are available to the individual for more elaborate processing. In other words, moods and feelings tend to be influenced more by information that the individual is unaware of processing; apparently, conscious processing allows for re-assessments and modifications of the initial impact of the information. These findings have implications for learning, since several “cues” in the learning material or the general learning atmosphere could act as subliminal stimuli, which generate certain emotional predispositions that may affect cognitive processing of each individual learner in particular ways. Something in the personality of the teacher, some unconscious implications of the learning material or even the general learning climate (Osborne, 1998) may have the power to influence the learner’s mood and emotions. And as Boekaerts (1993) has shown, when negative emotions create a pessimistic perceptual attitude they divert the learner’s attention to aspects irrelevant to the task, which activate intrusive thoughts that give priority to a concern for well-being rather than for learning. The “emotional unconscious” has also been investigated by use of the subliminal semantic priming technique. Two stimuli are presented successively for different amounts of time. The first stimulus is flashed subliminally for milliseconds, so that though the subject has the impression that something was shown, he does not have the time to process it adequately so as to record it in memory and recall it later. The stimulus that follows is presented supraliminally, that is long enough to allow processing at a conscious level. The question investigated is whether the first
9 stimulus produced any particular predisposition, which may influence perception and interpretation of the subsequent stimulus. A study by Fowler et al. (1981) indicated that the meaning of subliminal stimuli was available to the observer even when the stimuli themselves were not detectable. In this experiment words (e.g. “cook”) were flashed on a screen so rapidly that observers were not aware of what was presented. However, when this was followed by the presentation of two recognizable words (e.g. “bake” and “view”), and the observers were instructed to make a forced choice about which word was most like the subliminally presented, their choices were significantly better than chance. Results on subliminal semantic priming provide further evidence that material of which the viewer is not aware can influence ongoing perceptual judgment (Balota, 1983), but also the mood with which the person approaches subsequent events. To test the effect on mood, a stimulus with some emotional valence (e.g. the picture of a smiling or frowning face) is flashed for 1/200 second (5 milliseconds) and is immediately followed by another, neutral (“masking”) stimulus that is presented supraliminally. The role of the masking stimulus is to prevent further non conscious processing and recording of the initial stimulus. Then a third “target” stimulus is presented also supraliminally (e.g. a Chinese ideogram) and observers are asked whether they like it or not. Murphy and Zajonc (1993) found that liking the target stimulus depended on the initial stimulus that was subliminally presented. The emotional significance attributed to the “target” stimulus (in this case the ideogram) depended on the emotional significance of the initial stimulus (in this case, on whether the face in the picture was smiling or frowning). Hermans et al. (1998) showed that the emotional semantic priming effect holds for other senses as well. They paired pleasant and unpleasant odours with words of positive and negative emotional content and found that the emotional significance of the target word (i.e. whether it is positive or negative) is recognized in significantly less time when it corresponds to the emotional content of the preceding odour. That is, a non-conscious pleasant smell prepares the individual to recognize more quickly a word with pleasant connotations (e.g. “kiss”) than with unpleasant connotations (e.g. “murder”). Further evidence indicates that particular emotions, attitudes and intentions may be provoked non-consciously and influence the individual’s interpretation of social circumstances. Bargh (1990) studied the non-conscious effect of stereotypes.
10 In a brilliantly designed study, participants were told that they were to take part in a linguistic examination and that their task was to create sentences from a particular set of cards. One group of participants had words related to old age (e.g. wrinkles, elderly), while the second group had chance words, related to a variety of issues. When each participant finished and left the room, experimenters measured the amount of time s/he needed to reach the end of the corridor. And though the sentences produced about old age did not particularly refer to physical conditions, those participants who worked with them needed significantly more time to reach the end of the corridor; their pace had been slowed, simply because they had occupied their thought with old people! In another experiment, subjects were asked to make sentences with words that referred to either assertiveness or politeness. Then, when each subject finished s/he was asked to find the research supervisor who was outside the room, involved in a set up discussion with an accomplice. Bargh measured the amount of time that the subject waited before interrupting the experimenter and found that those involved in the experimental condition of “assertiveness” waited significantly less time than those involved in the experimental condition of “politeness”. Non-conscious processing of words of negative emotional valence can create anxiety. In vigorously controlled experimental conditions, Kemp-Wheeler and Hill (1987) showed that when unpleasant words are flashed subliminally, participants develop anxiety symptoms which are expressed with an increase in perspiration and muscular tone (varying from tension to tremor, according to individual parameters). The symptoms were absent or at a statistically significant lower level to participants who were exposed to words with neutral emotional valence. The effect of non-conscious processing has also been examined with clinical populations by researchers with a psychodynamic orientation (e.g. Silverman, 1976; Silverman and Weinberger, 1985). This set of studies showed that subliminal acoustic stimulation with messages of emotional significance may produce changes in pathology, behaviour and cognitive processes as for example problem solving.
11 Theoretical Implications
The attempt to synthesize experimental evidence, especially of the past two decades, on non-conscious processes inevitably leads to some theoretical conclusions (for a detailed review of the research literature, see Williams et al. (1997: 231-275)). Even if the “experimental” unconscious does not exactly coincide with its psychoanalytic synonym (some scholars would see “preconscious” as more relevant to what experiments assess), the recognition that not all thought processes are conscious, is an important advance to the scientific study of learning. What has been indicated up till now, is that non conscious processes are fundamental to all kinds of information processing executed by human beings, including learning, but they appear to follow qualitatively different rules than conscious processes. The picture that emerges is that of a system which, in contrast to the conscious one, has no limitations in terms of capacity of processing or on the amount of information it can handle, but is less flexible and susceptible to external manipulation. Non-conscious processes are not only related to remembering of past information, but also to perception and learning. As far as remembering is concerned, experimental findings confirm what has been clinically observed for decades; that particular kinds of unconscious internal or external stimulation may trigger the retrieval of information recorded in the individual’s memory and influence thoughts, emotions and behaviour. In relation to perception and learning, the evidence suggests that part of the incoming information may be perceived without the individual’s awareness and be recorded as “learning”, therefore influencing the whole knowledge base and experience of the individual. In the cases of non-conscious retrieval (remembering) and recording (learning), the information processed unconsciously appears to have been, at a certain point in the past, represented in consciousness. If this is the case, then this type of processing seems to be closer to the conception of preconscious. However, in the case of perception, much of the incoming information appears to be processed and influence thought and behaviour without ever becoming conscious. This finding is of particular significance, if we consider that perception is a prerequisite for learning. It confirms what Bowlby (1981: 49) had postulated 20 years ago: that incoming information is subjected to a series of tests outside awareness
12 and may have one of several fates, among which are the following: (i) it can be excluded without leaving a trace, (ii) it can be retained long enough outside consciousness in a temporary buffer store for it to influence judgment, autonomic responses and mood. Robinson (1998) suggests that this usually happens with information that has some emotional significance for the individual. When information is perceived, its emotional content is being “assessed” in milliseconds, and whether it will become available to consciousness or not depends on this assessment. On the basis of experimental evidence, he postulates that there must be an internal “pre-attentive” mechanism that assesses information in terms of valence (pleasant or unpleasant) and urgency at a first, non-conscious level of processing and before attention is voluntarily monitored. If this mechanism detects threat, the individual develops unconscious fear and anxiety that mobilize adaptive responses to situations to which immediate action is necessary. Among these behaviours, may be the implementation of conscious cognitive processing, which will elaborate more on the information and assess further its emotional significance for the individual. At least in cases of negative valence (unpleasant) and urgency, conscious processing may follow unconscious and be mediated by emotions. The implications for learning, here, are obvious. Information, which in milliseconds is assessed as threatening to the learner’s psychological balance may be blocked from further processing (disavowed or negated) and the learner may appear unable to “understand”. Alternatively, and perhaps depending on the individual, it may be distorted so that its emotional content or threat is “neutralized” and the learner may become prone to misunderstanding and confusion. On the basis of findings from a carefully designed study, Yuh-shiow and Vakoch (1996) postulate that there exist two different systems of information processing and recording. The explicit (conscious) system can carry out a step-bystep analysis of relatively simple structures of information and when the rules that govern the structure of stimuli are discovered, it has the capacity to adapt them to the circumstances. The implicit (non-conscious) system can immediately detect the central points of a complicated structure, but is not flexible enough to manipulate it. Accordingly, non-conscious knowledge may become more adaptive and receptive to manipulation (either external or internal) only if it is first “converted” into conscious.
13 Two decades ago, in an avant-garde paper for the time, Shevrin and Dickman (1980) had argued that the study of the unconscious is a necessary prerequisite for all psychological theory. Central to the model of mind they had suggested was the idea that conscious and unconscious processes follow fundamentally different rules. Since then, research has confirmed and refined their model. The evidence so far can be summarized as follows: (i)
Extensive and advanced mental processes, such as perception of new information, retrieval of background knowledge and learning of complicated rules related to the everyday experience of the individual may be carried out without conscious experience.
(ii)
Unconscious processes are not susceptible to the application of cognitive strategies, that is, it is not possible for the individual to be taught specific methods for manipulating unconscious mental processes or the information handled by them.
(iii)
Unconscious processes require extensive parallel distributed mental functions (Rumelhart et. al., 1986; McClelland et. al., 1997), that is, they require simultaneous analysis of
the
information
by many different
mental
mechanisms not all of which depend on the individual’s attention. (iv)
Limitations in the capacity of the cognitive system (e.g. Eysenck, 1988) restrict and/or inhibit certain types of conscious information processing. In contrast, unconscious processes appear not to be restricted by mental limitations (Williams et al., 1997).
(v)
Neither the individual nor any other external party (i.e. a teacher or a therapist) can assess, manipulate or control unconscious processes and the information to which they are applied, except if this information is first made available to consciousness (Yuh-shiow and Vakoch, 1996).
(vi)
In certain cases, conscious cognitive processing is monitored by emotions that were raised after a primary, extremely fast, unconscious processing of the valence and urgency of the information and of the arousal it created to the organism. In such cases, conscious cognitive processing functions as a secondary adaptive behaviour to external circumstances. Basic emotions that have been found to monitor adaptive behaviour are anxiety and/or fear (Heller and Nitschke, 1997; Robinson, 1998).
14 CONCLUSION
All learning is based on the processing of information that may have different emotional valence and urgency for different individuals. What is neutral for one, may be positive or negative for another and may generate the corresponding adjustments (i.e. inhibitions or modifications), which may have an unconscious effect both on the process and the outcome of learning in ways which cannot easily be observed. Of course, a lot more experimental and clinical research is needed in order to be able to define in specific ways what we can use this understanding for. Future research, for example, could be directed towards developing well-defined models of unconscious processing, which can have a direct application to learning contexts. The fact, for example, that contrary to the conscious cognitive system the unconscious one has unlimited capacity of processing may have very significant implications for education. Unconscious impact of the learning material should be kept in mind when we deal with learners (both children and adults) who show difficulties in understanding. Investigating the possible emotional significance of the “incomprehensible” might give us some insight, as teachers or therapists, to what inhibits learning. Helping the learner to transform the unconscious impact of the information into conscious selfawareness may contribute to his or her capacity to handle it in a more fruitful way. The general emphasis of the experiments presented above is not so much on the impact on learning of repressed unconscious material from the past history of the individual, as it is on the capacity of immediately preceding or current information to stir up emotions and moods, which “inflate” and disturb the learning process. By closely observing each individual learner in the “here and now”, the teacher or therapist may trace what points in the educational process (e.g. the material or the relationship) may act as inhibitors of learning. Here are some examples: (a) The experiments of semantic and emotional priming show that there are situations where the learner is blocked because the current content of the educational material or what has immediately preceded has some significant emotional valence for the learner; if this is detected and worked through its inhibiting effect on learning may be neutralized. (b) In the same way as a subliminal photo of Zajonc’s frowning face may affect students’ self evaluation, particular characteristics in the personality of the teacher or therapist may interact with the learner’s self-esteem in ways that inhibit learning. The
15 subliminal effects of the personalities of teacher and learner and of their interaction on the learning process remind of the psychoanalytic concept of transference and counter-transference. Irrespective of whether we interpret it in clinical psychoanalytic or experimental terms, the idea in both approaches is that unconscious issues in the educational relationship may affect the processing of information in various ways (either inhibiting or enhancing). (c) There are situations where the educational material may create particular “atmospheres” which may influence learners’ performance in various ways, as was in the cases of the “assertiveness-politeness” and the “old-age” experiments. Another conclusion to which we are led from what was presented above is related to parallel processing of information. Given that conscious information processing is restricted by limitations of the mental subsystem by which it is carried out, while unconscious processing is not, and if we take into consideration that information is processed by parallel subsystems, it becomes apparent that learning material is processed simultaneously at least at two different levels: a conscious and an unconscious one. This means that information that seems to have been “learned” (because its conscious processing appears to have been completed), may continue to be processed at an unconscious level; it may keep on being assessed and interpreted for unknown periods of time, producing the relevant organismic arousal and behavioural manifestations. This could probably explain why, sometimes, particular materials, which appear to have been learned, might later seem forgotten. Their continuous assessment and elaboration may have created emotional reactions that threaten the psychological balance of the individual and are therefore “safer” to be “blocked out” from retrieval. Parallel processing at two different levels also implies that information is subjected to many different interpretations, which could at times be contradictory. What may look clear at a conscious level may be very disturbing at the unconscious level. The pupil appears to understand but s/he cannot learn. Furthermore, while conscious processing of the information, due to limitations of the system, may have been completed at relatively short periods of time, unconscious processing may continue, since the system responsible seems to have unlimited capacity. This means that “learned” material may be “enriched”, distorted or adapted to the learner’s particular needs by many different unconscious interpretations of personal significance in the course of time. This could explain “misinterpretations”
16 “misunderstandings” or “forgetting” of material that had been learned at a certain time in the past. Experienced educators and therapists have often come across brilliant individuals, children or adults, whose learning is inhibited because of unresolved emotional, unconscious conflicts. Psychodynamic theories provide the tools to help these individuals work through their inhibitions and improve their general mental functioning. Experimental research may contribute by providing detailed descriptions of the nature and the manner through which current unconscious information processing interacts with the past history of the individual to affect the learning process. Research on unconscious processes influencing learning requires the collaboration of cognitive and psychodynamic theorists, because both approaches offer a number of concepts of the unconscious. These concepts are not necessarily contradictory; they may address different aspects or levels of analysis of the unconscious all of which contribute to a more global understanding of learning and learning difficulties.
17
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18 Davou, B.D. (1993) ‘The interplay of cognitive and emotional factors and their effect on learning in adolescence or Making links between approaches to learning ’ in I. Lyche-Gomnaes and E. Osborne (Eds.) Making Links: How Children Learn, Yrkeslitteratur As., 121-133. Ellenberger, H.F. (1970) The discovery of the unconscious, Basic Books. Entwistle , N. (1985) ‘Contributions of Psychology to Learning and Teaching’ in Noel Entwistle (Ed.) New Directions in Educational Psychology: 1. Learning and Teaching, The Falmer Press. Entwistle, Noel (1988) Styles of Learning and Teaching, David Fulton Publishers. Entwistle, N. (1991) ‘Approaches to learning and perceptions of the learning environment’, Higher Education, 22:201-4. Erdelyi, M. (1974) ‘A New Look at the New Look: Perceptual Defense and Vigilance’, Psychological Review, 81: 1-25. Erdelyi, Mathew (1985) Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Cognitive Psychology, W.H. Freeman & Co. Eysenck, Michael (1988) A Handbook of Cognitive Psychology, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fowler, C.A., Wolford, G., Slade, R., Tassinary, L. (1981) ‘Lexical access with and without awareness’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110: 341362. Frederiksen, N. (1984) ‘Implications of Cognitive Theory for Instruction in Problem Solving’, Review of Educational Research, 54: 363-407. Hamblin, Douglas (1981) Teaching Study Skills, Basil Blackwell. Heller, W. and Nitschke, J. (1997) ‘Regional brain activity in emotion: A framework for understanding cognition in depression’, Cognition and Emotion, 11: 637-661. Hermans, D. Baeyens, F., Eelen, P. (1998) ‘Odors as affective-processing context for word evaluation: A case of cross-modal affective priming’, Cognition and Emotion, 12: 601-613. Hilgard, Ernest and Bower, Gordon (1966), Theories of Learning, Appleton-CentureCrofts, Meredith Corp. Howe, Michael (1984) A Teacher’s Guide to the Psychology of Learning, Basil Blackwell. Hunt, E. (1971) ‘What kind of computer is Man?’, Cognitive Psychology, 2: 57-97.
19 Hunt, E. (1975) ‘We know who knows but why?’ in R. C. Anderson, R.J. Spiro and W.E. Montague (Eds) Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge, Erlbaum. Kemp-Wheeler, S.M. and Hill, A.B. (1987) ‘Ansxiety responses to subliminal experience of mild stress’, British Journal of Psychology, 87:653-662. LeDoux, Joseph (1998) The Emotional Brain, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Murphy S. and Zajonc, R. (1993) ‘Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with suboptimal and optimal stimuli’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64: 723-739. Oatley, K. (1990) ‘Freud’s cognitive psychology of intention: The case of Dora’, Mind and Language, 5: 69-86. Osborne, E. (1998) ‘Learning Cultures’ in B. Davou and F. Xenakis (Eds.) Feeling Communicating
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20 Biographical Note:
Bettina Davou is Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Athens. She is Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She was born in Athens and studied applied psychology at Bishop’s University, Quebec, Canada (B.A. Hons.), and psychology of education (M.Sc.) and cognition (PhD) at the University of London Institute of Education. While in London, she attended for one and a half year the training course in educational therapy and later on in Athens she received three years of training in children and adolescents’ psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Her main research interest is the interaction of cognition and emotion and the effect of non-conscious processes on human thought and behaviour.
21 Name and contact details:
Bettina Despina Davou, PhD, C.Psychol, AFBPsS Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Communication and Media Studies, University of Athens, 5 Stadiou Street, Athens 105 62, Greece. Email:
[email protected] Tel: ++3010 677.9180
