Convergence: Connecting Levels of Analysis in Psychological Science
In the past, our field harbored distinct, and often competing, schools of thought that tackled different problems and produced findings that often appeared to diverge. Today, investigators attack shared problems at complementary levels of analysis and produce results that converge. Studies of people in a social world; mental systems of cognition and emotion; and biological mechanisms of the genome and the nervous system interconnect and yield an integrated psychological science. The APS 23rd Annual Convention displays, and celebrates, these advances in our field.

Symposium

Varieties of Cognition Without Awareness: From Conscious College Students to Vegetative-State Patients

Friday, May 27, 2011, 9:00 AM - 10:20 AM
Cabinet

Chair: Hakwan Lau
Columbia University

Chair: Ran Hassin
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

The scientific view of the unconscious was largely shaped by subliminal priming experiments. New approaches overcome limitations of this technique, yielding discoveries of surprising powers of the unconscious - from emotions, through arithmetic, to cognitive control. These findings are also discussed vis-a-vis clinical studies of patients in a vegetative state.

Unseen But not Unsolved: Doing Arithmetics Non-Consciously
Ran Hassin
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Co-Author: Asael Y. Sklar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Novel approaches to subliminal perception
Sid Kouider
Ecole Normale Supèrieure, Paris, France

Cognition in patients diagnosed as unconscious and in sedated subjects
Tristan Bekinschtein
Cambridge University, United Kingdom

Performance capacity-matching as a new approach to understanding the functions of conscious awareness
Hakwan Lau
Columbia University