Conscious Intention Research Articles

Modulating conscious movement intention by noninvasive brain stimulation and the underlying neural mechanisms.

Conscious intention is a fundamental aspect of the human experience. Despite long-standing interest in the basis and implications of intention, its underlying neurobiological mechanisms remain poorly understood. Using high-definition transcranial DC stimulation (tDCS), we observed that enhancing spontaneous neuronal excitability in both the angular gyrus and the primary motor cortex caused the reported time of conscious movement intention to be ∼60-70 ms earlier. Slow brain waves recorded ∼2-3 s before movement onset, as well as hundreds of milliseconds after movement onset, independently correlated with the modulation of conscious intention by brain stimulation. These brain activities together accounted for 81% of interindividual variability in the modulation of movement intention by brain stimulation. A computational model using coupled leaky integrator units with biophysically plausible assumptions about the effect of tDCS captured the effects of stimulation on both neural activity and behavior. These results reveal a temporally extended brain process underlying conscious movement intention that spans seconds around movement commencement.

The Unconscious Determinants of Motivation in Organizations: Implications for Human Performance

Despite powerful conscious motivations and intentions, many organizations struggle to reach their goals. Recent research in neuroscience suggests that conscious motivations often have to compete with unconscious motivations and that various other hidden factors play a role in determining organizational performance. In this article, we will review the latest research in neuroscience and propose an alternate structure of motivation, including a suggested framework for applying this structure to enhance human performance within organizations.

Book Review: The Image in Mind: Theism, Naturalism, and the Imagination

The Image in Mind: Theism, Naturalism, and the Imagination. By Charles Taliaferro and Jil Evans. Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy of Religion. York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. vi + 213 pp. $140.00 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).Charles Taliaferro is a philosopher, Jil Evans is an artist, both are Episcopalians, and this volume-co-authored by them and including a series of paintings by Evans-provides a useful introduction to contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. Their distinctive emphasis is to highlight the essential role of the imagination, and especially images (both mental and visual), in thinking through the ongoing intellectual conflict between and naturalism.The dominant worldview in contemporary Western science and philosophy is arguably naturalism, which is itself a philosophical (rather than a scientific) position holding that nature (variously and contentiously defined) is all that exists. Naturalists can be divided into two basic groups, and broad. Strict naturalists want a thoroughgoing, physical (or materialistic) account of the world (p. 6). When it comes to human nature, strict naturalists insist that mind and brain are identical, and thus reduce all mental activities to chemical processes. To be consistent, strict naturalists bite the bullet and claim that our subjective sense of ourselves as having conscious intentions, experiences, and even beliefs is an illusion. Consciousness, therefore, does not exist, our subjective experience of it notwithstanding. A prominent contemporary strict naturalist is the philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, also well known as one of the New Atheists.Broad naturalists, on the other hand, share the strict naturalist position that the cosmos is not, at base, purposive or teleological. But they differ insofar as they allow that consciousness, experience, values, aesthetic properties, and the like have emerged (p. 7). That is, broad naturalists admit that apparently non-material realities exist, but they are still explainable through natural material processes, and do not pre-date their gradual evolutionary emergence in the lives of certain animals, ourselves certainly and others possibly. Taliaferro and Evans state that both strict and broad naturalists reject theism, the soul, any concept of an individual afterlife, and so on. Indeed, this negation of and its associates (sometimes referred to as supernaturalism) is the almost universal mark of naturalism (p. 7). Naturalism is thus the positive philosophical face of atheism.In contrast to all forms of naturalism, which they find problematic on multiple counts both rational and imaginative, Taliaferro and Evans advocate theism (p. 8) and integrative dualism (p. 98) as the best general framework to account for reality as we actually experience it from within rather than from the third-person perspective of the sciences. When it comes to dealing with the challenge of evils both natural and moral, Taliaferro and Evans move from this general Platonic framework to a more Christian theological mode, arguing that the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, combined with a potential afterlife, can redeem rather than justify the evils in creation (pp. …

Task-irrelevant emotion facilitates face discrimination learning

We understand poorly how the ability to discriminate faces from one another is shaped by visual experience. The purpose of the present study is to determine whether face discrimination learning can be facilitated by facial emotions. To answer this question, we used a task-irrelevant perceptual learning paradigm because it closely mimics the learning processes that, in daily life, occur without a conscious intention to learn and without an attentional focus on specific facial features. We measured face discrimination thresholds before and after training. During the training phase (4days), participants performed a contrast discrimination task on face images. They were not informed that we introduced (task-irrelevant) subtle variations in the face images from trial to trial. For the Identity group, the task-irrelevant features were variations along a morphing continuum of facial identity. For the Emotion group, the task-irrelevant features were variations along an emotional expression morphing continuum. The Control group did not undergo contrast discrimination learning and only performed the pre-training and post-training tests, with the same temporal gap between them as the other two groups. Results indicate that face discrimination improved, but only for the Emotion group. Participants in the Emotion group, moreover, showed face discrimination improvements also for stimulus variations along the facial identity dimension, even if these (task-irrelevant) stimulus features had not been presented during training. The present results highlight the importance of emotions for face discrimination learning.

To suppress, or not to suppress? That is repression: Controlling intrusive thoughts in addictive behaviour

Research to understand how individuals cope with intrusive negative or threatening thoughts suggests a variety of different cognitive strategies aimed at thought control. In this review, two of these strategies – thought suppression and repressive coping – are discussed in the context of addictive behaviour. Thought suppression involves conscious, volitional attempts to expel a thought from awareness, whereas repressive coping, which involves the avoidance of thoughts without the corresponding conscious intention, appears to be a far more automated process. Whilst there has been an emerging body of research exploring the role of thought suppression in addictive behaviour, there remains a dearth of research which has considered the role of repressive coping in the development of, and recovery from, addiction. Based on a review of the literature, and a discussion of the supposed mechanisms which underpin these strategies for exercising mental control, a conceptual model is proposed which posits a potential common mechanism. This model makes a number of predictions which require exploration in future research to fully understand the cognitive strategies utilised by individuals to control intrusive thoughts related to their addictive behaviour.

Nonsuicidal Self-Injury among Youth

Following the 2007 definitional consensus of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), there have been significant advances in our understanding of the behavior, particularly among children, adolescents, and young adults. 1 International Society for the Study of Self-injury. [homepage on the Internet]. http://www.isssweb.org. Accessed July 15, 2013. Google Scholar Given the tremendous growth of the field, in 2013 the American Psychiatric Association incorporated NSSI into their diagnostic manual as a disorder warranting further research. 2 American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 5th ed. American Psychiatric Association, Arlington (VA)2013 Crossref Google Scholar NSSI is defined as the deliberate immediate destruction of one's own body tissue (eg, self-cutting, bruising, burning) in the absence of conscious suicidal intent. This definition excludes socially accepted practices such as tattooing and body piercing. 1 International Society for the Study of Self-injury. [homepage on the Internet]. http://www.isssweb.org. Accessed July 15, 2013. Google Scholar Stereotypic and repetitive self-injurious behavior by youth with developmental disabilities and neuropsychiatric disorders as well as major forms of NSSI (eg, bone breaking, amputation) are subsumed under the broad umbrella of NSSI behaviors 3 Nock M.K. Favazza A.R. Nonsuicidal self-injury: definition and classification. in: Nock M.K. Understanding nonsuicidal self-injury: origins, assessment and treatment. American Psychological Association, Washington (DC)2009: 9-18 Crossref Google Scholar ; however, the current review focuses on NSSI that occurs in typically developing youth, which is consistent with current conceptualizations in the field. 3 Nock M.K. Favazza A.R. Nonsuicidal self-injury: definition and classification. in: Nock M.K. Understanding nonsuicidal self-injury: origins, assessment and treatment. American Psychological Association, Washington (DC)2009: 9-18 Crossref Google Scholar , 4 Klonsky E.D. Muehlenkamp J.J. Lewis S.P. Walsh B. Nonsuicidal self-injury. Hogrefe Publishers, Cambridge (MA)2011 Google Scholar , 5 Nixon M.K. Heath N.L. Self-injury in youth: the essential guide to assessment and intervention. Routledge, New York (NY)2008 Google Scholar

Coordination outside formal organization: consensus-based decision-making and occupation in the Occupy Wall Street movement

Previous work has shown that a vital component for successful collective action is formal organization, in particular because it facilitates internal coordination. But how is coordination achieved in the absence of formal organization? To answer this question, this article presents findings drawn from an ethnographic study on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in New York City. It first introduces the concept of ‘autonomy’ to discuss the particular challenge faced within the decentralized structure of OWS of developing coordination. It then shows how the practice of holding mass assemblies and the occupation of Zuccotti Park itself each served, in incidental and unintentional ways, as mechanisms of coordination. These findings confirm previous work on the importance of coordination and build upon it by demonstrating that not only is coordination possible outside formal organization, but that it is also in some cases achieved without conscious intention. This suggests the utility of moving beyond an overly rational understanding of social action by acknowledging the inevitability of unforeseen outcomes.

"Free will": are we all equal? A dynamical perspective of the conscious intention to move.

In their seminal (1983) study, Libet and colleagues suggested that awareness of one’s intention to act has a postdictive character in that it occurs long after cerebral activity leading to action has been initiated. Crucially, Libet et al. further suggested that the time window (±200 ms) between the conscious experience of the intention to act and the action itself offers people the possibility of “vetoing” the unfolding action. This raises the question of whether there are individual differences in the duration of this “veto window” and which components of the readiness potential (RP) and the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) explain this variability. It has been reported that some psychiatric diseases lead to shorter intervals between conscious intentions and actions. However, it is unclear whether such patients suffer from impairment of the sense of volition, thus experiencing voluntary movements as involuntary, or whether voluntary inhibition of action is actually reduced, since conscious intention occurs later. We had two aims in the present paper. First, we aimed at clarifying the role of consciousness in voluntary actions by examining the relation between the duration of the veto window and impulsivity. Second, we sought to examine different components of the RP and LRP waveforms so as to attempt to explain observed variability in W judgments. Our results indicate (1) that impulsive people exhibit a shorter delay between their intention and the action than non-impulsive people, and (2) that this difference can hardly be attributed to a difference in time perception. Electroencephalography indicated that the rate of growth of the RP is relevant to explain differences in W judgments, since we observed that the RP at the moment of conscious intention is lower for people with late conscious intention than for people with early conscious intention. The onset and the intercept of these waveforms were less interpretable. These results bring new light on the role that consciousness plays in voluntary action.

Derrida and the Death Penalty

In his late work on inherited concepts, Jacques Derrida's attention became increasingly focused on deconstructive critique of sovereignty, and he suggested more than once that represents a key site deconstruction of sovereignty is possible. Across his writings in this period, Derrida argued that principle of sovereignty invoked by modern, secular nation-state in fact has its roots in a fundamentally theological logic, uncritical, and wholly deconstructible, concept of a unitary, autonomous sovereign who, in end, resembles a kind of God. This same logic governs concept of individual sovereignty, Derrida suggests. Accordingly, in texts we have from this period, Derrida repeatedly indicates that marks one of places critique of sovereignty is in some sense already underway. As he put it in his most sustained treatment of this theme, an address to States General of in 2000 (published in English as Psychoanalysis Searches States of Its Soul: Impossible Beyond of a Sovereign Cruelty), principle of sovereignty ultimately stands for the autonomy and omnipotence of subject-individual or state-freedom, egological will, conscious intentionality.1 notion of sovereignty therefore includes a whole set of concepts that from very beginning, begins to put into question. thought of unconscious, Derrida notes here and elsewhere, is, after all, precisely thought of what undermines and disrupts 'the autonomy and omnipotence of subject' and 'egological will.' Viewed from this perspective, would be a theory and a practice that essentially devotes itself to idea that there is something that undercuts individual sovereignty: namely, presence of another system in psyche that determines human thought and action from a place entirely beyond conscious intentionality. What drives human thought and action, on this view, is in fact something fundamentally incompatible with consciousness. Thus, in Psychoanalysis Searches, Derrida locates critique of sovereignty at very heart of psychoanalytic revolution. The first gesture of psychoanalysis, he writes, have been to explain this sovereignty, to give an account of its ineluctability while aiming to deconstruct its genealogy (WA, 244). And from other side, philosophical deconstruction of sovereignty can be understood, he suggests in Rogues, as one way of tak[ing] into account within politics what once called unconscious.2If deconstruction attempts to take into account what unconscious does to politics, and to classical notion of sovereignty, this is in part because, as Derrida makes quite clear in Psychoanalysis Searches, itself has remained remarkably silent on this question. In short, institution of has failed to take up critique of sovereignty that issues from its own most fundamental insight. More precisely, we could say that it has not yet thought through ramifications of its very first gesture, whereby it analyzes, and thus begins to deconstruct, fictional character of sovereignty. That is, it has not yet managed to think through how this insight impacts prevailing concepts and practices in crucial fields of ethics, law, and politics. Hence psychoanalysis's fundamentally confused state, as Derrida terms it, its 'soul-searching' state, on questions of ethics and politics. problem, for Derrida, quite simply, is that psychoanalysis has not yet undertaken and thus still less succeeded in thinking, penetrating, and changing axioms of ethical, juridical, and political (WA, 244). And to this extent, he suggests, it remains unable to think what is happening today in world, precisely in those places where most traumatic . . . most cruel events of our day are being produced, phantasm of sovereignty, as Derrida will call it, drives exercise of sovereign power (WA, 244). …

Thinking About Our Work: When Partners Grow Apart

Thinking About Our Work: When Partners Grow Apart Lee Kassan1 issn 0362-4021 © 2015 Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society group, Vol. 39, No. 4, Winter 2015 349 1 Editor, GROUP; Supervisor, Inter-Care Ltd.; Supervisor, Couple Therapy Program, Training Institute for Mental Health; and private practice. Correspondence should be addressed to Lee Kassan, 240 Madison Avenue, Suite 10J, New York, NY 10016. E-mail: leekassan@aol.com. Recently, two different patients asked me to recommend another therapist their partners could see for psychotherapy. I went through my files, and put a request on the professional list servers, and provided some names. The same week, a patient ’s partner, not in therapy, said that, although she was willing to come to couple therapy, she would not see a therapist individually, and this was clearly disappointing to her husband. As someone who sees both individuals and couples, over the years I’ve learned that, when new clients begin seeing me for therapy, I need to have some concern for and awareness of how the changes they will inevitably make in the course of treatment will affect the most intimate relationships in their lives. These changes are, of course, also the goal: to free people of old patterns and scripts and help them find and integrate new options and freedoms. But when the patient is half of a couple, these changes can be problematic. The problem of a gap between partners beginning and growing is often a consequence of treatment, but one rarely addressed in the professional literature. A person in therapy is actively trying to change old patterns of behavior and thought (whatever resistances he or she may encounter in the process). If the partner is not engaged in a similar journey of self-discovery, a gap may appear and then widen. It is typical of distressed couples that each partner blames the other for his or her problems, and this can be exacerbated when the one in treatment starts to feel more intact, more enlightened—just plain healthier. The selection of a partner (and the decision to get married) is a complicated one that takes place on many levels, some conscious and some not. As the person in therapy becomes more aware of the unconscious needs and motivations, and as 350 kassan he or she grows in the process of therapy, these old needs may change, diminish, or even disappear. This can seriously unbalance the relationship. If, for example, the motivation for marriage is a need to be taken care of by a spouse in a parental role, that need may disappear as the person in therapy works through old issues and becomes more adult and less dependent. Sometimes the partner is happy about, even excited by, the changes, by the new mood or spontaneity, or by the willingness to reveal that the patient brings home. But, at least as often, these changes are experienced as dangerous or challenging. They may threaten the unspoken contract that every couple makes: I will be this for you if you will be that for me. Sometimes, in the course of therapy, a person will outgrow the needs that were originally met in the relationship, and the implicit contract must be renegotiated. But because the other person’s needs are likely the same as before, a new agreement about how the relationship will work may be elusive or even impossible. Renegotiating the relationship agreement is part of couple therapy, but this becomes challenging if only one partner is in the office. Many couple difficulties start with problems in communication. When I see a couple, we can address these issues directly, and when I explain the guidelines I offer for emotional communication (what I call the “Rules of Engagement”), I can make sure that both partners practice, learn, and follow the new communication guidelines. Although it’s possible that one person in the relationship can break the old loops, it’s so much easier when both have that goal and conscious intention. When I begin seeing a couple together, to work on a particular issue, such as an affair, or a more general problem, such as their communication, the “treatment gap” is less of an issue, because...

Movement kinematics in motor sequence learning task depends on conscious intent

Movement kinematics in motor sequence learning task depends on conscious intent

Thesis and antithesis: Resolving the dialectique in the first movement of Debussy’s Violin Sonata

This article will offer a close reading of the first movement of Debussy’s Violin Sonata (1917), and will set forth to discuss its formal principles within a dialectical context. References to Hegelian philosophy will be made, and also to precursory dialectical structures. The work will also be studied in relation to sonata form, and by taking Mark DeVoto’s claim that this late work displays a “persuasive sonata form” structure into consideration, this analysis will in fact elucidate Debussy’s ostensible departure from archetypical sonata form. Examining Debussy’s correspondences and sketches will posit the Sonata initially within existing scholarship - both historiographical and analytical — paying particular attention to the composer’s “late” style in general. A discussion on the relationship between dialectic and symbolist aesthetics will then be necessary in order to promote the idea that the work is structured around a dialectical framework. The second section of this article will carry out an in-depth analysis of the movement, adopting and adapting a semiotic approach as developed by Nicolas Ruwet and Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s distributional methodology in order to study the work’s formal attributes and motivic construction. Use of this approach will bring to light the strong bond between the motivic thesis and antithesis in the first section of the Sonata, and also the conflation of material in the final section of the movement, which aims towards a dialectical resolution. Use of paradigmatic diagrams will illuminate the methods in which synthesis is achieved by different compositional strategies, including merging, completion, compression, combination and conjunction. Furthermore, the analysis will draw attention to Golden Section proportions in the middle section of the piece. In conclusion, it will be argued that Debussy’s conscious effort to avoid Teutonic principles has paradoxically brought his work closer to Germanic thinking. Amid a time of personal and social conflict, one could ultimately compare his approach to that of the Hegelian “free spirit” — a free spirit that transcends political boundaries by its occupation of a neutral ground. Whether or not this demonstrated Debussy’s conscious compositional intention to reflect Hegel’s philosophical principles remains unsolved. More certain, however, is the fact that the presentation of a thesis and a subsequent antithetical section clearly leads to a resolution of the dialectique in the first movement of this Sonata.

The association between family functioning and NSSI in adolescence: The mediating role of depressive symptoms

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) refers to socially unacceptable behavior causing intentional and direct injury to one’s own body tissue without conscious suicidal intent. Recent literature has highlighted the importance of examining the interaction between intrapersonal (e.g. coping, psychopathology) and interpersonal risk factors (e.g. psychopathology in family, family abuse, parenting), for enhancing our understanding of NSSI. The present study adds to this by investigating the association between NSSI, adolescent depressive feelings, and perceived family functioning. A sample of 358 adolescents was assessed by means of self-report measures for (1) NSSI behavior (NSSI-AT), (2) depressive symptoms (CDI-NL), and (3) perceived family functioning (FAD-NL). The prevalence rate of NSSI was 14.29%. Data suggest that general dysfunction of the family as a whole, poor affective involvement, and excessive behavioral control uniquely distinguished between adolescents engaging in NSSI and adolescents not engaging i...

СТРАТЕГИЯ КАК ОСОЗНАННОЕ НАМЕРЕНИЕ ЧЕЛОВЕКА ОТНОСИТЕЛЬНО ПЕРСПЕКТИВ НЕПРЕРЫВНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ

СТРАТЕГИЯ КАК ОСОЗНАННОЕ НАМЕРЕНИЕ ЧЕЛОВЕКА ОТНОСИТЕЛЬНО ПЕРСПЕКТИВ НЕПРЕРЫВНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ

The Relationship Between Latent Inhibition and Performance at a Non-intentional Precognition Task

Many spontaneous cases of extra-sensory perception (ESP) seem to occur without the conscious intent of the experient to manifest any anomalous phenomena. Indeed, Stanford׳s psi-mediated instrumental response (PMIR) theory, which frames ESP as a goal-oriented function, goes as far as to suggest that such intent may be counterproductive to psi. The present study was the latest to build on the successful paradigm developed by Luke and colleagues in testing the non-intentional psi hypothesis and potential covariates of psi task success. This study focused on the ability of latent inhibition-an organism׳s cognitive tendency to filter out apparently irrelevant information-to predict an individual׳s sensitivity to psi stimuli. A total of 50 participants completed a two-part auditory discrimination performance measure of latent inhibition; a battery of questionnaires; and a 15-trial, binary, forced-choice, non-intentional precognition task. They were then either positively or negatively rewarded via images from subsets that they had pre-rated, seeing more images from their preferred subsets the better they performed at the psi task and vice versa. Participants scored a mean hit rate of 7.96 [mean chance expectation (MCE) = 7.50], which just failed to reach a statistically significant level, t(48) = 1.62, P = .06, one-tailed, ESr (effect size correlation) = 0.23. However, latent inhibition was found to be unrelated to participants׳ precognitive performance.

Why we have free will.

The author discusses his belief that free will exists and the impact that conscious reasoning and intentions have on decision making in humans. Topics include the influence of unconscious neural activity on decision-making and adjustments made to behavior, the influence of environment and emotional or cognitive biases on decision-making, and philosophical theories regarding free will.

A Dialogical Inquiry into Practice Frameworks within Jabiru Community College: Re-centering Young People and Community within a Social Constructionist Frame

This chapter explores the practice framework guiding the practice of workers at Jabiru Community College, a community-based school in Brisbane, Australia. The chapter articulates the findings from a dialogical inquiry begun by the three authors with input from workers and youth. Seven dimensions of the framework being used by workers are described. Australian scholar Raewyn Connell stated in a recently published edited collection, Schools, communities and social inclusion, We rely on schools for social progress and mobility, and of course influential people usually have done well at school. But school systems that rely on competitive tests, examinations, selective provision and rationing of advanced education also sort children ruthlessly, steering some towards privilege and some towards exploitation. Schools lift some out of poverty but destroy others’ hopes and without conscious intention, lock out many of the rising generation from advanced education, professions and many riches of our culture. (2011, p. xi)

Teacher Language Awareness as an Important Element in Teacher Professionalism and Autonomy

Being an autonomous person means being responsible for one’s actions and accepting the consequences of one’s behavior. Autonomy introduced to teaching comprises a cluster of behavior capacities characteristic of human interdependence. In the field of teaching, the development of autonomy is pursued as a matter of conscious intention, and its presence can be recognized in teacher’s behaviors which are shaped by reflection. This paper focuses on teacher language awareness (TLA) and the relationship between TLA and other dimensions of teacher knowledge. It aims at presenting TLA as one of the key elements of teacher professional development and autonomy. The author focuses on the definition of TLA and discusses a number of factors contributing towards the complexity of TLA. Subsequently the role of TLA in structuring input for learners is analyzed as well as the relationship between TLA and pedagogical practice, and factors affecting the application of TLA in the classroom. Moreover, connections between teachers’ cognitions and practices in teaching grammar will be presented. Finally, TLA and teacher professionalism will be summarized.

Volitional action as perceptual detection: Predictors of conscious intention in adolescents with tic disorders

Voluntary actions are accompanied by a distinctive subjective experience, so that they feel quite different from physically similar involuntary movements. However, the nature and origin of this experience of volition remain unclear. Voluntary actions emerge during early childhood, in parallel with reduction of involuntary movements. However, the available markers of the experience of volition, notably Libet's mental chronometry of intention, cannot readily be used in young children. In Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS), however, involuntary tic movements may coexist with voluntary control into adulthood. Therefore, adolescents with GTS could potentially confuse the two classes of movement. We have measured the temporal experience of voluntary action in a well-characterised group of adolescents with GTS, and age-matched controls. We replicated previous reports of a conscious intention occurring a few hundred milliseconds prior to voluntary keypress actions. Multiple regression across 25 patients' results showed that age and trait tic severity did not influence the experience of conscious intention. However, patients with stronger premonitory urges prior to tics showed significantly later conscious intentions, suggesting that the anticipatory experience of one's own volition involves a perceptual discrimination between potentially competing pre-movement signals. Patients who were more able to voluntarily suppress their tics showed significantly earlier conscious intention, suggesting that the perceptual discrimination between different action classes may also contribute to voluntary control of tics. We suggest that the brain learns voluntary control by perceptually discriminating a special class of internal ‘intentional’ signals, allowing them to emerge from motor noise.

Ego depletion impairs implicit learning.

Implicit skill learning occurs incidentally and without conscious awareness of what is learned. However, the rate and effectiveness of learning may still be affected by decreased availability of central processing resources. Dual-task experiments have generally found impairments in implicit learning, however, these studies have also shown that certain characteristics of the secondary task (e.g., timing) can complicate the interpretation of these results. To avoid this problem, the current experiments used a novel method to impose resource constraints prior to engaging in skill learning. Ego depletion theory states that humans possess a limited store of cognitive resources that, when depleted, results in deficits in self-regulation and cognitive control. In a first experiment, we used a standard ego depletion manipulation prior to performance of the Serial Interception Sequence Learning (SISL) task. Depleted participants exhibited poorer test performance than did non-depleted controls, indicating that reducing available executive resources may adversely affect implicit sequence learning, expression of sequence knowledge, or both. In a second experiment, depletion was administered either prior to or after training. Participants who reported higher levels of depletion before or after training again showed less sequence-specific knowledge on the post-training assessment. However, the results did not allow for clear separation of ego depletion effects on learning versus subsequent sequence-specific performance. These results indicate that performance on an implicitly learned sequence can be impaired by a reduction in executive resources, in spite of learning taking place outside of awareness and without conscious intent.