Cognitive Control and Consciousness: Summary Notes

Cognitive Control: Automatic and Controlled Attentional Processes

Cognitive control involves mechanisms of attention, working memory, and consciousness.
Bottom-up attention: Stimulus-driven.
Top-down attention: Voluntary.
Automaticity: Processing due to practice or salience (e.g., Stroop task).
- Incongruency slows color naming due to conflict between word and color processing.
Visual Spatial Cueing Paradigm: Explores voluntary vs. stimulus-driven attention.
Brain activity measures (fMRI, EEG) are informative for assessing mechanisms driving behavior.

Brain regions responsible for top-down and bottom-up attention are of interest.
EEG indicators of spatial orienting and visual processing show components like P1, N1, LPD, and LDAP.

Short-term memory: Retains information briefly through encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Working memory (Baddeley's model): Holds information online and manipulates it.
- Components: Central Executive, Phonological store (with articulatory control & phonological loop), Visuospatial sketchpad.
Assessment: Corsi block test for visuospatial memory.

Definition: Awareness of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, external world, and self-awareness.
Hard Problem (Chalmers, 1995): How do physical processes produce subjective experience?
Function: Possibly a social function, aiding in understanding others.
I spy study: Suggests will is a fabricated experience from perceived causal link between thought and action.

Conscious will arises when a thought precedes an action, is consistent with it, and lacks alternative causes (Wegner, 2003).
Libet's experiments: Preparatory motor activity precedes conscious decision to move.
- Critiques focus on timing and measurement precision.
Brain activity patterns can predict decisions up to seven seconds before conscious awareness (Soon et al.).

Consciousness may follow pre-conscious decisions.
Consciousness relies on integrated brain processes, not a single region. Integration is key.