Do we reflect while performing skillful actions? Automaticity, control, and the perils of distraction


Juan Pablo Bermúdez
 (Universidad Externado de Colombia)

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Abstract: Many human actions require skill, from our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance. What is the proper explanation of skill-involving action? There are two main answers: anti-intellectualism holds that skillful action is produced by automatic coping processes without the involvement of higher-order mental processes; intellectualism claims that even bodily skillful actions require the involvement of intention-directed processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism—choking under pressure, expertise-induced amnesia, and expert confabulation—, and argue that, while the evidence contradicts ‘Anscombean’ kinds of intellectualism, it also supports another intellectualist view, namely that the executive, top-down control of attention is a necessary component of any skilled action. Continue reading Do we reflect while performing skillful actions? Automaticity, control, and the perils of distraction