In Patterns II we discussed some of the relationships between consciousness and learning:
"Each of us as a human being is constantly subjected to enormous amounts of information. A portion of this stimulation is the result of the contact we have with the parts of the world which we are able to sense with our sensory channels. The amount of information available from our ongoing experience greatly exceeds our ability to sense our experience consciously. In fact much of the process of learning and growing is our ability to sense regularity or pattern in our experience and to develop programs within ourselves to cope effectively with the world at the unconscious level of behavior. For example, your ability to read and understand this very sentence is a program which at one point in your life you were unable to perform. You went through the task of learning to recognize first the letters, then the words and finally the phrases and sentences of English. Associated with each of these steps were the specific eye scanning patterns which were appropriate. Learning to associate a certain visual input with a set of meanings which they represent was a relatively long and arduous task. Your skill in reading rapidly and meaningfully depends in large part on your ability to operate those lower level patterns of eye scanning and letter recognition unconsciously. The vast bulk of our everyday lives is occupied with the execution of tremendously complex patterns of unconscious behavior. The ability we have to enjoy our experience and engage in the activities which each of us find interesting and pleasing would in large part be lost if we did not have the ability to program ourselves to carry out certain complex patterns of behavior for execution at the unconscious level of behavior. Imagine how cluttered our experience would be, for example, if it were necessary for us to consciously maintain the rate and depth of our breathing, the tonus of our muscles, the level of our blood sugar …
"The process of creating programs which are useful to us — the learning process — is an ongoing process of change. We refer to this process as modeling. Modeling occurs both at the conscious and the unconscious levels of behavior. The process of learning to understand and speak our native language is an example of the process of unconscious modeling. The process of learning to read and to spell is, for most people, an example of conscious modeling. Notice, however, even in the case of conscious modeling, much of what is learned is the sequencing and organization of lower level patterns of behavior already available at the unconscious level of behavior. For example, children learning to spell are not explicitly taught to form mental images of the words they are learning — that is, to employ their visualization strategies — yet, children who succeed in becoming excellent spellers employ this skill unconsciously.
"A young athlete learning to run the 100 meter dash is learning how to sequence and utilize patterns of muscle movements already available at the unconscious level of behavior. His ability to run the 100 meter dash at maximum speed will depend in large part on his ability to make unconscious the patterns of sequencing of those patterns of unconscious behavior already available.
"… consciousness is a limited phenomenon. Specifically, as humans we are limited to representing to ourselves in consciousness a small finite number of chunks of information. In his now classic paper called The Magic Number 7 plus or minus 2, George A. Miller (1956) carefully presents the outline of the limits of consciousness. Essentially, his research leads him to the conclusion that we are capable of entertaining in consciousness 7 plus or minus 2 chunks of information. One of the most interesting implications of Miller's paper is that the size of the chunk is variable. In other words, the limitation of 7 plus 2 applies not to the number of bits of information, but rather to the number of chunks. Thus, by carefully selecting the code by which we organize our conscious experience, we have a great deal of latitude in increasing the amount of bits of information we can represent to ourselves consciously. Miller is artfully vague in his discussion of what a chunk is. If we identify the term chunk with the notion of a pattern of behavior which has not yet achieved the status of an unconscious TOTE, then the interaction between the function of consciousness in the learning process and chunking becomes useful. As we learn to identify and respond systematically to patterning in our experience, we are able to make unconscious portions of our experience which we previously had to cope with at the level of consciousness. A chunk in consciousness is a patterning or regularity in our experience which we have not yet succeeded in making unconscious. Thus, at the beginning of the learning of a particular task, the size of the chunk will be rather small — encompassing a relatively short patterning or regularity in our experience. As this size chunk achieves the status of a TOTE — thus becoming unconscious — our consciousness is free to attend to larger level patterns which are composed of the sequencing and organizing of the TOTE's which they are composed of, or to attend to patterning in other representational systems or areas of experience.
Consider an example from your own experience. For those of you who at one time learned to ride a bicycle, remember how complex it was at first. Your first time up was overwhelming. You had to think about balancing, pushing pedals up and down, steering and watching where to steer. This was certainly more than you could handle, so perhaps your father or a friend held the rear of the bicycle so you only had worry consciously about steering and pedaling. And if you were one of the fortunate ones who already had an unconscious program for pedaling from riding a tricycle, then the task was reduced to learning to coordinate steering and pedaling. Once these skills had been drilled into your behavior they happened automatically, then perhaps when you weren't even looking your father let go and just ran behind and off you were, learning to coordinate the pedaling and steering with balancing. After a time you had so programmed yourself to operate the bicycle that all aspects of the task dropped outside of consciousness, leaving you free to enjoy the scenery or talk with a riding companion. No matter how long it has been since you have ridden a bike, the program will be there and if you climb on a bicycle the program will activate and you will be able to ride once again without ever thinking even for a moment about all the steps in this complex process. They are all chunked and sequenced at the unconscious level leaving you free to enjoy your ride. If they were conscious you would have to think about pedaling, steering, balancing every movement and your consciousness would be so cluttered you would either fall or run into something. The learning of patterns of behavior such as bicycle riding as unconscious programs is both useful and necessary to allow us as humans to do the varied and complex things we do every day."
Some people have tests in their strategies which require them to insure that every representation in the steps of their strategy reaches the signal value necessary for consciousness. Requiring such high signals may be adaptive in some cases, but too often tends to slow the process down because the individual has to keep operating to increase the signal value.
Other people, however, distract themselves consciously to insure that the strategy will take place at the unconscious level. Consider, for instance, the following strategy of a skilled mathematician. This man regularly displayed an unusual skill in adding tremendous columns of numbers rapidly and without error. When asked how he was able to perform such feats the mathematician replied that he didn't have to do anything. He maintained that all he did was to make an internal image of a blackboard, and after a series of numbers was presented to him, he merely watched the blackboard in his mind's eye until a hand came into the picture and wrote down the answer. He would then simply read the answer on the blackboard.