心理学と心理療法のジャーナル
オープンアクセス

概要

無意識の思考に注意を払わない熟考は神経科学的な証拠によって十分に裏付けられているのでしょうか?

ロウェナ・コング

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.