Gist Memory in the Unconscious-Thought Effect

Abstract

The unconscious-thought effect (UTE) occurs when people are better able to make complex decisions after a period of distraction rather than immediately or after a period of conscious deliberation. This finding has often been interpreted as evidence of unconscious thinking. In two experiments, we provided the first evidence that the UTE is accompanied by enhanced memory for the gist of decision-relevant attributes and demonstrated that the cognitive demands of a distraction task moderate its effect on decision making and gist memory. It was only following a low-demand distraction task that participants chose the best alternative more often and displayed enhanced gist memory for decision-relevant attributes. These findings suggest that the UTE occurs only if cognitive resources are available and that it is accompanied by enhanced organization of information in memory, as shown by the increase in gist memory.

Cognitive style modulates conscious but not unconscious thought: Comparing the deliberation-without-attention effect in analytics and wholists

“…For example, Lerouge (2009) reported that participants who were primed to have a configural mind-set benefited from unconscious thought in differentiating alternative choices, whereas those with a featural mind-set did not. Lerouge suggested this is because a configural mind-set motivates participants to form evaluatively coherent representations of choices, which are more compatible with the ''gist-based'' process of unconscious thought (Abadie et al, 2013;Dijksterhuis et al, 2009). However, the current findings illustrate that wholists, who have a natural preference for holistic organization of information, did not manifest the deliberation-without-attention effect; they performed as well without as with distraction when differentiating complex choices.…”

“…Evidence has suggested that evaluatively coherent representations enhance the differentiation among choices (Judd & Lusk, 1984;Liberman & Chaiken, 1991;Millar & Tesser, 1986). This characteristic of unconscious thought was further supported by two more recent studies, which reported that unconscious thought is accompanied by an enhancement of gist memory of decision-relevant attributes (Abadie, Waroquier, & Terrier, 2013) and is more effective in weighting important attributes (e.g., good safety record for a car) over unimportant attributes (e.g., availability of colors for a car; Bos et al, 2011). All suggested that unconscious thought, relative to conscious thought, is more capable of integrating decision-relevant information into better organized, holistic representations, thus improving decision-making.…”

“…Hence, conscious thought can perform just as well as unconscious thought when the information that needs to be processed does not exceed the limit of mental capacity, either via constrained input, or if the information is effectively organized. Second, the advantage of unconscious thought is also reflected in gist-based, coherent representations of choices (e.g., Abadie et al, 2013;Dijksterhuis, 2004;Dijksterhuis et al, 2009), which reflects a better organization of information for decision-making. Wholists, who are more used to holistic, intuitive, superficial processing of information, may be naturally advantaged in such processing.…”

The restless mind while driving: drivers’ thoughts behind the wheel

“…One explanation could be that mind wandering is useful for individuals. In a recent study by Abadie et al (2013), participants had to give their response to a complex problem immediately or after a delay during which they had to perform a distractive task. The solution given to the problem was better for participants who performed a distractive task before answering the problem.…”

Demonstration-based training (DBT) in the design of a video tutorial for software training

“…In conducting such a test, it seems useful to glean insights from fundamental research on memory representations to better understand how the depth of processing at intake relates to the completeness of the representation on which later task performance is based. The distinction between verbatim and gist memory seems especially relevant (e.g., Abadie et al 2013;Reyna 2012;Reyna and Brainerd 1995). That is, the repetition of a procedure might have a strong effect on verbatim memory development, which refers to a detailed representation of the exact information.…”