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Automatic and Controlled Processes (ACP) are the two categories of cognitive processes, that together are thought to account for all such processes. The amounts of “processing power”, attention, and effort a process requires is the primary factor used to determine whether it’s a controlled or an automatic process.

A controlled process often requires most of a person’s attention; therefore, it generally cannot be conducted simultaneously with other controlled processes without task-switching or impaired performance. The process is defined as a temporary sequence of nodes activated under control of, and through attention by, the subject. This aspect of information processing is “tightly capacity limited, but the costs of this capacity limitation are balanced by the benefits deriving from the ease with which such processes may be set up, altered, and applied in novel situations for which automatic sequences have never been learned. One example of a controlled process is driving. A vehicle operator is required to focus attention on the controls of the vehicle and its surroundings, and an additional task (such as talking on a cell phone) would reduce the amount of cognitive resources available for focusing on the primary task.

An automatic process occurs without explicit direction, and it can take place in parallel with other actions without impairment. Defined as the activation of a sequence of nodes that “nearly always becomes active in response to a particular input configuration,” and that “is activated automatically without the necessity for active control or attention by the subject”, automatic processing is activation of a learned sequence of elements in long-term memory that is initiated by the appropriate inputs and then proceeds automatically, often not stressing the capacity limitations of the system, and without necessarily demanding attention. Examples of automatic processes are recognizing the faces of other people and recognizing spoken words, since both take place without explicitly deciding to do so, both take place while many other processes are occurring, and in fact neither can easily be inhibited. The table below lists the major differences between controlled and automatic processes.

Automatic and controlled processing is a two part theory of human information processing. Defined as the activation of a sequence of nodes that “nearly always becomes active in response to a particular input configuration,” and that “is activated automatically without the necessity for active control or attention by the subject”, automatic processing is activation of a learned sequence of elements in long-term memory that is initiated by the appropriate inputs and then proceeds automatically, often not stressing the capacity limitations of the system, and without necessarily demanding attention. The second aspect of this theory, controlled processing, is defined as a temporary sequence of nodes activated under control of, and through attention by, the subject. This aspect of information processing is “tightly capacity limited, but the costs of this capacity limitation are balanced by the benefits deriving from the ease with which such processes may be set up, altered, and applied in novel situations for which automatic sequences have never been learned.”

Controlled Processing
One definition of a controlled process is “a temporary sequence of nodes activated under control of, and through attention by, the subject.” Controlled processes are thought to be slower, since by definition they require effortful focus. Furthermore, controlled processes are “tightly capacity limited, but the costs of this capacity limitation are balanced by the benefits deriving from the ease with which such processes may be set up, altered, and applied in novel situations for which automatic sequences have never been learned.” In essence, humans are thought to have a limited capacity for overtly controlling behavior, but they must use such control when dealing with novel situations for which they haven’t learned an automatic process. Due to the overt attention demanded, this type of process can often be interrupted to perform other tasks, however.

Attention Control
Attention control is a major example of controlled processing. Attention control can be seen as a type of self-control, which can refer to any instance in which a subdominant response is substituted with a dominant one. There are three types of attention control :
 * Selective Attention: Focusing attention on one aspect of the environment, while avoiding attention to other stimuli, to include those that are "attention-grabbing".
 * Divided Attention: Attending and responding to multiple streams of information simultaneously.
 * Sustained Attention: Focusing attention over a long period of time.

Attention control is thought to come at a cost of a temporary reduction of capacity for self-control. This is based on a theory that the mind has a self-control "capacity" that can depleted. There are several sources of evidence to support this theory.

A standard task that demonstrates the additional effort required to overtly control one's own attention has subjects watch a video of an interview. The video of the interview has extraneous text displayed. In one condition subjects aren't given instructions regarding attention. In the other condition subjects are instructed to avoid attending to the words. The usual finding is that subjects in the latter condition find the task to be more difficult. These effects are also demonstrated in the Stroop task, in which subjects must name the color of a presented word, where the presented word is itself the name of a color.

There is evidence that effortful attention control has effects that last beyond the task requiring attention. In one study, participants performed an attention-control task and subsequently completed portions of the GRE. Those participants who were required to explicitly exert attention control performed more poorly; however, control of attention didn't seem to affect their performance in short-term memory tasks. This is hypothesized to be because the GRE requires self-control of cognitive processes, whereas short-term memory tasks do not. Effortful attention control has also been tied to an increased inability to inhibit thoughts of death, racially-biased thoughts, and emotional responses.

One experiment sought to differentiate between the effects of general effort and effort directed toward attention. The experiment demonstrated that emotional inhibition was reduced for subjects who were required to control their attention, whereas subjects who performed a difficult task that didn't involve attention control did not have reduced inhibition. Other experiments found that effortful attention control resulted in lower blood glucose levels, but that restoration of the glucose level mitigated the costs associated with such attention control.

Automatic Processing
An automatic process is defined as the activation of a sequence of nodes that “nearly always become active in response to a particular input configuration,” and “is activated automatically without the necessity for active control or attention by the subject.” In general, automatic processes “operate through a relatively permanent set of associative connections. . . and require an appreciable amount of consistent training to develop fully.” An automatic attention response is a special type of automatic process that directs attention automatically to a target stimulus.

The study of automatic processing (and how it is developed) can help in understanding control in skilled behavior. With extensive practice, the cognitive processes required when performing a skilled action might become faster and more efficient. Such gains in proficiency will reduce the “processing power” required by the task, allowing the performer to concentrate on other aspects of the situation (e.g. navigation while skiing), process information faster, or perform additional tasks in parallel.

Implicit in the the idea of automaticity is that if a process is truly automatic, any other simultaneous task should in theory be possible without interfering with that process. Automatic processing can interfere with other processes, however, possibly delaying a proper response when attention is drawn to the wrong place (i.e. distraction), resulting in a movement that is inappropriate for the situation (e.g. responding to an opponent's "fake" in tennis).

Flow
"A person does not need to be told to pay attention to a stimulus that captures attention quickly and effortlessly." In many cases, explicitly directing one’s own or another’s attention is necessary due to the presence of another stimulus that more easily captures attention. In the case of “flow”, however, exogenous attractors of attention are ignored, and many automatic processes are either suspended (e.g. stimulus-driven attention changes) or ignored (e.g. discomfort.) On the other hand, situations in which autonomy is encroached upon (i.e. the individual must always control his/her actions to abide by rules imposed by the task) are thought to inhibit flow. This implies that another requirement of flow is to be able to suspend some aspects of controlled processing. Additionally, several areas of research indicate that during a state of flow an otherwise-controlled process becomes automatic and becomes dominant over all other automatic processes.

Flow involves highly-focused attention on the task at hand, loss of self-consciousness, and distorted time perception, among other cognitive characteristics. Some also report that during flow states they are less aware of autonomic responses such as hunger, fatigue, and discomfort. Some researchers hypothesize that more challenging tasks can paradoxically require less effort to perform. Flow has been notoriously difficult to study, however, because it's difficult to produce in a controlled laboratory setting. It therefore largely remains a phenomenon that's observed indirectly via self-report. Most experiments have relied heavily on correlating the presence of flow with various attributes of the task and the subjects' reported experiences. Of those correlations, subjects experiencing flow generally report that they perceive a good match between the task requirements and their skills (e.g. a professional basketball player in a professional basketball game.) Task structure itself, and the clarity of the goal of the task are also thought to be related to when flow occurs. All of these aspects of flow imply that there must be an opportunity to suspend controlled processing, as well as inhibit certain types of automatic processing.

A study involving video game performance showed that flow in participants (determined based on a self-report survey of flow characteristics) strongly correlated with performance in the game. A related study attempted to inhibit and induce flow by biasing the moods of participants. The experimenters found that flow could be inhibited by a negative mood, but could not be induced by a positive mood. In another video-game based study, subjects in an experimental condition that increased or decreased in difficulty to match the subject's skill showed a higher level of flow and had higher performance than other groups in the experiment (for one of the other groups the game was consistently too easy and for the last it was consistently too difficult.) However, there is also some evidence that flow can be achieved when the demands of the task exceed the skill of the individual if the extrinsic utility of the task itself is high (in contrast to video games.)