Article1988

Toward an instance theory of automatization.

3,467 citations0/0 files storedPsychological Review

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Sport Psychology and Performance Memory Processes and Influences Human-Automation Interaction and Safety

Abstract

This article presents a theory in which automatization is construed as the acquisition of a domainspeciSc knowledge base, formed of separate representations, instances, of each exposure to the task. Processing is considered automatic if it relies on retrieval of stored instances, which will occur only after practice in a consistent environment. Practice is important because it increases the amount retrieved and the speed of retrieval; consistency is important because it ensures that the retrieved instances will be useful. The theory accounts quantitatively for the power-function speed-up and predicts a power-function reduction in the standard deviation that is constrained to have the same exponent as the power function for the speed-up. The theory accounts for qualitative properties as well, explaining how some may disappear and others appear with practice. More generally, it provides an alternative to the modal view of automaticity, arguing that novice performance is limited by a lack of knowledge rather than a scarcity of resources. The focus on learning avoids many problems with the modal view that stem from its focus on resource limitations. Automaticity is an important phenomenon in everyday mental life. Most of us recognize that we perform routine activities quickly and effortlessly, with little thought and conscious awareness—in short, automatically (James, 1890). As a result, we often perform those activities on "automatic pilot " and turn our minds to other things. For example, we can drive to dinner while conversing in depth with a visiting scholar, or we can make coffee while planning dessert. However, these benefits may be offset by costs. The automatic pilot can lead us astray, causing errors and sometimes catastrophes (Reason & Myceilska, 1982). If the conversation is deep enough, we may find ourselves and the scholar arriving at the office rather than the restaurant, or we may discover that we aren't sure whether we put two or three scoops of coffee into the pot. Automaticity is also an important phenomenon in skill acquisition (e.g., Bryan & Hatter, 1899). Skills are thought to consist largely of collections of automatic processes and procedures

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3,467 citations exist upstream.

References

1973Perception in chess 1974Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading 1971Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations.1979On the economy of the human-processing system.1984Resources--a theoretical soup stone?1899Studies on the telegraphic language: The acquisition of a hierarchy of habits.

Cited by

2001The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity 2002FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING 2003A definition of dyslexia 1999The double-deficit hypothesis for the developmental dyslexias.1997An information processing model of anxiety: Automatic and strategic processes 2001On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure?2002The Malleability of Automatic Stereotypes and Prejudice 2018Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.