Time, action, and consciousness.

Full Abstract

Time plays a central role in consciousness, at different levels and in different aspects of information processing. Subliminal perception experiments demonstrate that stimuli presented too briefly to enter conscious awareness are nevertheless processed to some extent. Implicit learning, implicit memory, and conditioning studies suggest that the extent to which memory traces are available for verbal report and for cognitive control is likewise dependent on the time available for processing during acquisition. Differences in the time available for processing also determine not only the extent to which one becomes conscious of action, but also provides the basis for making attributions of authorship to experienced acts. In this paper, we offer a brief overview of these different findings and suggest that they can all be understood based on the fact that consciousness takes time. From this perspective, the availability of representations to conscious awareness depends on the quality of these representations - the extent to which they are strong, stable in time, and distinctive. High-quality representations occur when processes of global competition have had sufficient time to operate so as to make the system settle into the best possible interpretation of the input. Such processes implement global constraint satisfaction and critically depend on reentrant processing, through which representations can be further enriched by high-level constraints. We discuss these ideas in light of current theories of consciousness, emphasizing the fact that consciousness should be viewed as a process rather than as a static property associated with some states and not with others.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Cleeremans, Axel (A); Sarrazin, Jean-Christophe (JC);

Affiliation: Cognitive Science Research Unit, Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP 191, Avenue F.-D. Roosevelt 50, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium. axcleer(-atsign-)ulb.ac.be

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Human movement science (Hum Mov Sci), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Apr; vol 26 (issue 2) : pp 180-202

Dates: Created 2007/03/28; Completed 2007/06/01;

PMID: 17346837, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Awareness - physiology
Cognition
Conditioning (Psychology)
Consciousness - physiology
Humans
Learning

Learning
Memory - physiology
Movement - physiology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Sublimation
Time Factors

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

Molecular regulation of cognitive functions and developmental plasticity: impact of GABAA receptors. 21 Mar 2007
Patients' conscious recollections from cardiac anesthesia. 30 Jul 2002
Consolidation of strictly episodic memories mainly requires rapid eye movement sleep. 29 Apr 2004
Neurobiological basis of consciousness. 30 Jan 1999
Self-representation: searching for a neural signature of self-consciousness. 29 Nov 2003
Observing one's hand become anarchic: an fMRI study of action identification. 29 Nov 2003
Self-consciousness, self-agency, and schizophrenia. 29 Nov 2003
Psychology: insight and the sleep committee. 20 Jan 2004
Sensory-motor cortex activity modulation by hypnotic susceptibility and hypnosis during finger movement. 28 Feb 2004
Evidence for feedback dependent conscious awareness of action. 13 Jun 2007

See 100+ related articles.