Implicit knowledge and motor skill: what people who know how to catch don't know.
People are unable to report how they decide whether to move backwards or forwards to catch a ball. When asked to imagine how their angle of elevation of gaze would change when they caught a ball, most people are unable to describe what happens although their interception strategy is based on controlling changes in this angle. Just after catching a ball, many people are unable to recognise a description of how their angle of gaze changed during the catch. Some people confidently choose incorrect descriptions that would guarantee failure of interception demonstrating unconscious knowledge co-existing with systematically different conscious beliefs. Where simple solutions to important evolutionary problems exist, unconscious perception needs to be impervious to conscious beliefs.
Reed
Nick
N
Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, Queen's College, Oxford, UK.
McLeod
Peter
P
Dienes
Zoltan
Z
D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D019359:Knowledge; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*