Automatic mediation or absence of mediation? Commentary on Crutcher and Ericsson (2000)

R. J. Crutcher and K. A. Ericsson (2000; see record 2000-05419-014) showed that subjects stopped reporting mnemonic mediation in a recall task after sufficient practice. They concluded that subjects continued to use the mediator indefinitely but that its execution eventually became automatic and no...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition Vol. 29; no. 6; p. 1381
Main Authors Rickard, Timothy C, Bajic, Daniel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.11.2003
Subjects
Attention
Awareness
Color Perception
Humans
Memory, Short-Term
Mental Recall
Multilingualism
Paired-Associate Learning
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Practice (Psychology)
Reaction Time
Reading
Retention (Psychology)
Verbal Behavior
Vocabulary
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Summary:R. J. Crutcher and K. A. Ericsson (2000; see record 2000-05419-014) showed that subjects stopped reporting mnemonic mediation in a recall task after sufficient practice. They concluded that subjects continued to use the mediator indefinitely but that its execution eventually became automatic and no longer required access to working memory. Their article thus supports the more general hypothesis that multistep cognition can take place without awareness. In this article the authors evaluate that conclusion on both conceptual and empirical grounds and report results of a new experiment that indicate that a qualitative shift to direct, unmediated recall can occur for at least some tasks.
ISSN:0278-7393
DOI:10.1037/0278-7393.29.6.1381