This is from Chris Stoltz over on the Forum today:
This is really interesting. There is research about the neuroprocessing of intention and action. As Benjamin Libet found (and as has been repeated zillions of times), intention and action happen (neurologically) at about the same time. In other words, we don’t “decide” on what to do/say and then say it. Rather, our subconscious brain both decides what to do/say AND goes ahead and does it at the same time– our consciousness just “feels” like intention came before action.
There’s an interesting chapter in Daniel Dennet’s Consciousness Explained about this. Dennet cites an experiment where test subjects were “wired” with electrodes from their brains to a slide projector and also given a remote control to change the slides. They were told that they should press the remote control button when they were done watching the slide, and they were told that the electrodes were there to monitor which parts of their brains were “activated” when watching different types of slides.
Unbeknownst to the test subjects, the remote wasn’t actually connected to the slide projector—the electrodes were, and it was neural activity which made the slides change. The slide remote was, however, timed, so that the researchers could see when subjects’ brains wanted to change slides and when they pressed the button.
When the volunteers watched the slide show, it was discovered that
(a) they all felt like the slides were changing before they pressed the button on the remote. Intention followed action!
(b) when the researchers looked at brain activity, they found that the regions that were responsible for action (pressing the button) operated at the same time as the regions responsible for deciding to press the button.
The implications? Conscious awareness of decision making is either happening at the same time as unconscious processing, or comes after. If this is the case, it would seem to follow that there is little point in engaging consciousness of language when teaching, as one would be addressing something that happens “after the subconscious fact,” so to speak.
Libet’s paper is here:
selfpace.uconn.edu/class/ccs/Libet1985UcsCerebralInitiative.pdf