Page 100 - 2024-bfw-MyersAP4e-TE

bird’s color, form, movement, and distance. One of the grand ideas of today’s cognitive neu-
®
AP Exam Tip
roscience is that much of our brain work occurs off stage, out of sight. Thinking, knowing,
remembering, and communicating all operate on two independent levels — a conscious,
®
TEACHING THE AP TIP Dual processing is another one of
those big ideas that shows up in deliberate “high road” and an unconscious, automatic “low road.” The high road is reflec-
several units. Pay attention for the tive, the low road intuitive — together creating what researchers call dual processing
®
AP exam! (Kahneman, 2011; Pennycook et al., 2018). We know more than we know we know.
(10 minutes) Dual processing If you are a driver, consider how you move into the right lane. Drivers know this uncon-
comes up repeatedly throughout sciously but cannot accurately explain it (Eagleman, 2011). Most say they would bank to
the textbook, so take a moment to the right, then straighten out — a procedure that would actually steer them off the road. In
ensure students understand it by reality, an experienced driver, after moving right, automatically reverses the steering wheel
just as far to the left of center, only then returning to center. The lesson: The human brain is
using an application card. On an a device for converting conscious into unconscious knowledge.
index card, have students summa- Or consider this story, which illustrates how science can be stranger than science fiction.
rize dual processing in their own During my sojourns at Scotland’s University of St Andrews, I [DM] came to know cogni-
tive neuroscientists David Milner and Melvyn Goodale (2008). They studied a local woman,
words. Then have them write one D. F., who suffered brain damage when overcome by carbon monoxide, leaving her unable
example of dual processing from to recognize and discriminate objects visually. Consciously, D. F. could see nothing. Yet she
their own lives. To make this a exhibited blindsight — she acted as though she could see. Asked to slip a postcard into a
vertical or horizontal mail slot, she could do so without error. Asked the width of a block
collaborative learning activity, ask in front of her, she was at a loss, but she could grasp it with just the right finger–thumb
students to swap cards and discuss distance. Likewise, if your right and left eyes view different scenes, you will be consciously
with a partner. Remember: Take aware of only one at a time — yet you will display some blindsight awareness of the other
(Baker & Cass, 2013).
time to address any misinformation How could this be? Don’t we have one visual
that comes up in this activity. Figure 1.5-3 system? Goodale and Milner knew from animal
When the blind can “see” research that the eye sends information simultane-
In this compelling demonstration ously to different brain areas, which support differ-
of blindsight and the two-track ent tasks (Weiskrantz, 2009, 2010). Sure enough, a
mind, researcher Lawrence scan of D. F.’s brain activity revealed normal activity
TEACH 1.5-2 Weiskrantz trailed a blindsight in the area concerned with reaching for, grasping,
patient down a cluttered hallway.
Although told the hallway was and navigating objects, but damage in the area con-
Teaching Tip empty, the patient meandered cerned with consciously recognizing objects. (See
around all the obstacles without another example in Figure 1.5-3.)
Blindsight is listed in Topic 1.4, any awareness of them. How strangely intricate is this thing we call
Sensation. However, the authors vision, conclude Goodale and Milner in their aptly
prefer to include it here with the titled book, Sight Unseen (2004). We may think of
discussion of dual processing. our vision as a single system that controls our visu-
ally guided actions. Actually, it is a dual-processing
system (Foley et al., 2015). A visual perception track
TEACH 1.5-2 Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. enables us “to think about the world” — to recog-
nize things and to plan future actions. A visual action
Teaching Tip Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
track guides our moment-to-moment movements.
The dual-track mind also appeared in a patient
Students often find blindsight
dual processing the principle who lost all of his left visual cortex, leaving him blind to objects and faces presented on the
confusing. Explain that not only that information is often right side of his field of vision. He nevertheless could sense the emotion expressed in faces
simultaneously processed that he did not consciously perceive (de Gelder, 2010). The same is true of normally sighted
can people have blindness like that on separate conscious and people whose visual cortex has been disabled with magnetic stimulation. Such findings sug-
described in the text, but if they have unconscious tracks. gest that brain areas below the cortex process emotion-related information.
damage to the occipital lobe, people blindsight a condition in which Much of our everyday thinking, feeling, and acting operates outside our conscious
a person can respond to a visual
can also be “blind” to understanding stimulus without consciously awareness (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). Some “80 to 90 percent of what we do is uncon-
experiencing it. scious,” says Nobel laureate and memory expert Eric Kandel (2008). Sometimes our uncon-
what they see with their working eyes. scious biases (discomfort around someone of a different race or sexual orientation) do not
They won’t be able to identify objects
or even be able to say that they see 90 Unit 1 Biological Bases of Behavior
anything recognizable. Whether we
can understand what we see depends
on the brain working as it should.
knowledge. The modern understanding of the 15/12/23 9:23 AM
03_myersAPpsychology4e_28116_ch01_002_163.indd 90
TEACH 1.5-2 unconscious views it as a parallel processing
system that enables us to deal with all sorts
Teaching Tip of information and stimuli outside the con-
Help students understand that scious, thus allowing us to be more cognitively
unconscious processing is different efficient. The research on dual processing
from Freud’s ideas about the does not validate Freud’s claims about what
unconscious mind. Freud described the unconscious contains or the meaning of
the unconscious as a repository of unconscious thoughts and feelings, but it does
childhood experiences that influenced indicate that the unconscious is more influen-
behavior without our conscious tial than we realize.

90 Unit 1 Biological Bases of Behavior

03_HammerTE4e_47547_ch01_2a_163_4pp.indd 90 07/02/24 5:24 PM