PSYC10003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 35: Daniel Wegner, Benjamin Libet, Bereitschaftspotential
11. Volition and Motivation
Volition
• While otiatio addresses h oe strives towards certain goals, volition is related to the
mechanisms used in the formation, maintenance, and ipleetatio of goals ad itetios.
• Humans can plan very complex actions for the future. We do that by using our learning experience
stored in memory
• We have unique ability to foresee long time horizons, to imagine scenarios and goals and to verbally
represent our plans
• Humans can acquire meta-cognitive knowledge (knowledge about knowledge), about what they want
in the future, relatively independent from current stimuli/situations
• How do we then choose between and control all these current potential future desires?
Cognitive Control
• Volition refers to the coordination of a large number of functions such as perception, cognition,
attention, emotion, action control by means of an intention or goal
• This allos to selet a weaker, task-relevant response (or source of information) in the face of
competition from an otherwise stronger, but task-irreleat oe
Posner and Snyder (1975)
• Distinguished between automatic and controlled processes
1. Automatic processes
▪ Stimulus-driven
▪ Unconscious
▪ Does not require much or any capacity
2. Controlled processes
▪ Intention-driven
▪ Conscious
▪ Require cognitive capacity (expensive, cost energy)
• However, instead of a dichotomy, there might be a continuum between those processes (eg. Learning
to drive becomes automatic over time)
• Initial intentions can also determine the selection of later processes
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Document Summary
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