Consciousness might still be in business, but not in this business.
In a recent comment on our paper Implicit Working Memory (Hassin, Bargh, Engell, & McCulluch, 2009) Guterman (2010) argued that a possible interpretation of the results of one of our experiments is that "conscious awareness…enabled the participants to find ways to benefit from the predictability…while nullifying the cost." Unfortunately, the data do not support this interpretation. Additionally, Guterman (2010) seems to have suggested that our results may be explained by non-working memory processes. We argue against this interpretation.
Hassin
Ran R
RR
Psychology Department & The Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
D001364:Awareness; D003243:Consciousness; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D056344:Executive Function; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term