心理学と心理療法のジャーナル
オープンアクセス

概要

Is Deliberation without Attention of Unconscious Thought Sufficiently Supported with Neuroscientific Evidence?

Rowena Kong

The unconscious-thought theory has been proposed to be a way of thinking which works differently from conscious attention but with higher capacity that caters better to a complex decision-making process. A study on deliberation-without- attention effect hypothesis was carried out which lends support to the formulation of the above theory. This commentary addresses the limitations of the study procedures and the unconscious-thought theory in terms of poorly defined concepts and distinctions from conscious thought, underexplored neural representation of unconscious thought and confounders which could have influenced participants’ judgment of their decision-making outcome. Further exploration of theory should consider possible association between unconscious thought processing and priority access to long-term memory content based on the theory’s principle of high capacity working power compared to conscious thinking.