AUTOMATICITY

The ease or efficiency with which knowledge can be retrieved or manipulated. A distinction can be made between controlled and automatic processes. When a task is unfamiliar, it demands conscious attention (control) and sometimes has to be performed step-by-step. Gradually, as we become more skilled at the task, the process becomes automatised, demanding less and less mental effort. The advantage in developing automatic processes is that they do not impose demands upon working memory capacity, and thus enable us to give attention to other tasks. Thus, adults open doors with a high degree of automaticity because they have performed the operation many times. This permits them to perform more attention-demanding tasks at the same time, such as holding a conversation.

 Automatic processes are slow to set up, but, once set up, are difficult to modify or suspend because they are not immediately under our voluntary control. A good example is the Stroop effect. When a literate English speaker is presented with the word RED written in green and asked to name the colour of the ink, they find the task very difficult. The reason is that the response of a reader to the visual stimulus RED is so highly automatised (giving immediate access to the notion of redness) that it is hard to suppress it and to focus instead on the colour of the script.

Because automatic processing is rapid and does not demand attentional resources, it is not usually available to report. An automatic process is often a set of sub-processes which have become composed (combined) into a larger sequence. Once this sequence has been established, we are no longer consciously aware of the sub-sequences and unable to report on them.

The concept of automaticity is especially important in theories of reading. A skilled reader is seen as one who is capable of decoding a text (recognising words on the page) automatically. As this decoding operation makes few or no demands on working memory, there is ample memory capacity available for constructing a mental representation of the text and for bringing world knowledge to bear on what is read.

The degree of automaticity with which we perform a language task may vary according to the demands of the task. A conversation in a bar is likely to be highly automatic, while writing a business letter demands a degree of control.

See also: Analysis, Expertise, Task demands, Working memory

Further reading: Kellogg (1995: 83–9); Oakhill and Garnham (1988)

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Problems with the dictionary view

The dictionary view

Dictionaries versus encyclopaedias

The encyclopaedic view of meaning

Embodiment and conceptual structure summary

Schematic systems

Semantic structure

Conceptual structure

Image schemas and abstract thought

Properties of image schemas

What is an image schema?

Image schemas