| I. My academic life: I was a graduate student at the University of Alabama, in the cognitive psychology program. With my mentor, Mark Klinger, I studied unconscious perception. Do you know about these subliminal messages in advertisements or in CDs that are supposed to influence your behavior? Well, that's all big lies; if there are such things they sure do not work. Indeed, we show that unconscious perception works only under very specific conditions in our laboratory (well, at least that's as far as our knowledge goes right now), so do not worry about being subliminally influenced by what you see or listen to. But anyway, we do very exciting research as we show that when you have to make very rapid judgments on whether a word is pleasant or unpleasant, for example, your judgment is influenced by a very briefly flashed word-prime that is also pleasant or unpleasant. Thus, if the word-prime is pleasant, you will be more likely to respond "pleasant" whatever the word you have to judge is. Pretty cool, huh?! However, right now the consensus is that we can process only a single word unconsciously at one particular time. But I'm working on showing that unconsciously perceiving several pieces of information and putting them together might also be possible. I was also working on an attentional process called the "spotlight of attention." In short, it is an area in space where the processing of the information you attend to is facilitated so that there is less interference with irrelevant information. Using our unconscious priming paradigm, we showed that the spotlight of attention adapts itself to the characteristics of the task you have to perform. Thus, if information can appear in a large area on a computer screen, the spotlight of attention will be more spread out and therefore less efficient. However, if the area in which the information is to appear is cued sufficiently in advance, the spotlight of attention can keep a narrow focus and thus be very efficient. II. My research interests: Now, you might be wondering why on Earth I study all these things? Well, what I am really interested in is how we process the information unconsciously. Only a couple of decades ago, if you ever dared to pronounce the word "unconscious" in the scientific community, people had a good laugh and told you that was no scientific stuff and that it would never be. However, with new methodological advances we are now gaining the respect and interest of the same scientific world, so that scientific research on the unconscious has a bright and long future in front of itself. As mentioned above, the present consensus is that the unconscious is "dumb;" that is, it is very limited in what it can do, merely picking up on the meaning of a single word at a time. However, I personally believe that the unconscious is capable of much more. For instance, we now know that everytime we learn something our neurons form new connections with each other, modifying their axons, dentrites, and release of neurotransmitters. Well, these things happen unconsciously, don't they? After all you do not tell your brain how to form these new connections; and even if you could, do you think you would know how the connections should be in order to reflect your newly acquired knowledge? But then some people would argue that if these brain functions are automatic (the "politically correct" term for unconscious), we need to attend to the studied information consciously before this can happen. Well, guess what? That is not true either! Indeed, studies on implicit learning show that our brain can automatically pick up on sequences of events produced by very complex sets of rules (so complex that we are incapable of stating the rules verbally), and use this implicitly acquired knowledge to make judgments on whether a sequence could be produced by the rules. Thus, it becomes hard to deny that a lot of things are happening unconsciously. The really tricky part is to find adequate scientific methods to prove this claim... I do believe that unconscious perception, reflected by unconscious priming studies, is only the first step toward a better understanding of what unconscious processing really is. Right now (I can always change my mind if I later discover I'm wrong), I think that the brain registers a whole bunch of information and accumulates knowledge unconsciously. That is, every time something happens in our life, whether we are conscious of it or not, our brain tries to reconcile this event with our cognitive world. I also think that it takes mental resources to do so, and that is why people who worry about their life all the time seem to never find the answer they are looking for: they use their mental resources to consciously try to make sense out of a complex situation. However, if this situation is so complex that their conscious abilities are insufficient, I think this kind of persons needs to sit back, take a deep breath, and relax, so that their brain can unconsciously make sense out of the situation, as it is less limited than our conscious thinking abilities. Of course, I do not claim for the existence of a metaphysical kind of unconscious. I think that it is a very understandable neurophysiological process that needs to be studied more and better. Thus, one of my other interests is cognitive neuroscience, as it links our findings in cognitive psychology with real brain phenomena. To take the example presented above, I think it is not silly to theorize that our brain is more efficient at processing information unconsciouly because it can send probes to a larger knowledge base destined to give a general, that is, compiled or integrated across all previously registered experiences, impression of what is happening. However, to process information consciously,the brain needs to send very specific probes for very specific information to be selected and sent to the frontal lobe (where presumably problem solving occurs), for a capacity-limited processing. Thus, at this point we can see why conscious and unconscious processes evolved in interaction with each other (evolutionary psychology is one of my new interests): if our conscious abilities allow us to make sensible decisions based on logic, they are however very limited by the small amount of information we can keep in mind at one particular time (try to make a decision about anything considering ten different variables for example, and see what a nightmare it is!). However, I believe that our unconscious abilities are not limited by any amount but the one that is registered in our brain, and if we just wanted to kick back and relax, a solution would come to mind based on all our previous experiences. Now, the trick is that the solution we will come up with will be highly dependent on what these previous experiences are, as well as on the way evolution "programmed" our brain to categorize and use information, and also what our present states of mind that are incorporated in the equation are. Thus, there is no guarantee that the end product will be ideal, as it is based on a gross aggregation of many factors, which can be as beneficial as detrimental in a particular situation. But this is of course pure speculations at this point. I just wanted to share what my interests were right now. As I said above, it is relatively easy to come up with theories; the real trick will be to find adequate and reliable scientific methodologies to prove everything. Thus, in sum, my research interests are unconscious perception, unconscious processing, implicit learning, implicit use of memory, automatization of processes, attentional processes, cognitive neuroscience to find the neuronal equivalents of psychological phenomena, and, recently, evolutionary psychology as well as computer simulations of mental processes according to connectionist models, as they might give us very useful insights about what is going on at hidden nodes (symbolizing unconscious processing). If you are at all interested in sharing your points of view with me about future scientific investigations of the unconscious, or even in working with me collaboratively on a specific project, you are more than welcome to Email me. The information presented above was compiled from several personal readings from scientific journals in psychology. You can find their references here. III. My Vitae: Self-explanatory, but you will find abstracts for some of the things I've done there as well. IV. Teaching: 1. University of Alabama: PY 101: Introduction to Psychology: Syllabus and outlines. 2. Millsaps College: Psyc 1000: Introduction to Psychology: Syllabus and outlines. Psyc 3100: Cognitive Psychology: Syllabus and outlines. Psyc 3050: Decision Making: Syllabus and outlines. Psyc 3150: Developmental Psychology: Syllabus and outlines. |
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