Minding the Mind: the Value of distinguishing aMong unconscious, conscious, and Metaconscious Processes

As you read this chapter, various unconscious, conscious, and even metaconscious processes will interact to derive conceptual meaning from patterns of light striking your retinas. Much of this occurs below the threshold of awareness because the shapes of letters and words are processed through hierarchical levels of unconscious visual processing until they are identified as perceptual representations that gain significance by linking to memories. You are also unlikely to be aware that your gaze automatically lingers on words for longer or shorter times depending on linguistic features such as word length, word frequency, or sentence placement—that your eyes and not just your stylistic preference respond differently to clumsy and klutzy (Rayner, 1998). Layered on top of these unconscious processes is also an experience of reading. Your awareness is filled with shapes and colors and perhaps an inner voice that quietly speaks the words you read. Every so often, you will feel some conceptual or visceral sentiment about the meaning of the text. Finally, you may intermittently take stock of your experience in a way that involves consciously reflecting on your conscious experience. You might engage in metacognitive regulation to monitor your understanding and to reread a confusing sentence, or you may suddenly become meta-aware that you have been skimming the text without realizing that your thoughts were fundamentally elsewhere. In this way, unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious processes interact when reading and also when carrying out any number of other tasks. When researchers discuss consciousness, they typically distinguish between information that is processed above or below the threshold of awareness—conscious versus unconscious. Yet, as we argue, distinguishing between all three levels of consciousness can often provide a richer and more complete understanding. In this chapter, we first consider the respective roles of unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious processes. We then focus on two topic areas that have revealed the value of a tripartite distinction of consciousness: mind-wandering and awareness of emotions. Last, we consider some future directions in which consideration of the construct of meta-awareness may prove particularly fruitful, including (a) the cultivation of mindfulness, (b) unwanted thoughts (motivated processes may influence whether unwanted thoughts reach meta-awareness), and (c) stereotyping and stereotype threat (the disruption associated with this process may be underpinned by mind-wandering episodes occurring below the threshold of meta-awareness). Collectively, this chapter suggests that distinguishing among unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious processes may help to illuminate a host of topics.