Abstract:

Cognitive automaticity is an inevitable road for human learning and progress. The traditional dichotomy view classifies cognitive processes into controlled or automatic processes according to certain features of cognitive processes (e.g., unconsciousness). However, these features are not universal but up to the experimental paradigms used by researchers. New viewpoints based on the attentional resources theory have been developed recently, taking the controlled-automatic process as a continuous dimension and the decreases of attentional resources as the central feature of the development of automaticity. Compared with dichotomy, the gradual view accords better with empirical findings. Further, the gradual view can be appliaed in both cognitive information processing and the stages model of skill acquisition theory, which confirmed the universality of gradual view.

Key words: information processing, skill acquisition, automaticity, implicit, attention, attentional resources theory