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This article was originally published in the Encyclopedia of Consciousness published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non- commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution’s website or repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier's permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial de Gardelle V and Kouider S (2009), Cognitive Theories of Consciousness. In: William P. Banks, (Editor), Encyclopedia of Consciousness. volume 1, pp. 135- 146. Oxford: Elsevier. Author's personal copy Cognitive Theories of Consciousness V de Gardelle and S Kouider, De´ partement d’Etudes Cognitives, CNRS/EHESS/ENS-DEC, Paris, France ã 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. motivated by the will to tackle this issue in a scien- Glossary tific way. As such, developing a scientific theory of Connectionism – Connectionism is a consciousness has been the Holy Grail of psychol- framework in cognitive science, according to ogy since its earliest days. Today, consciousness which all of the processes achieved by the continues to be a central topic of interest, extend- mind can be modeled by parallel and ing its interest across almost all disciplines of cog- distributed processing among simple nitive science. operational units. It is mostly based on the Studying consciousness, however, has not always development of artificial neural networks, and been an acceptable question in psychology. Indeed, it has been traditionally opposed to the the issue of consciousness was totally rejected position that mental processes are based on by the dominant behaviorist school during the symbolic computations. first half of the twentieth century. The failure of Functionalism – Functionalism is a doctrine earlier psychologists, who were stuck in unsolvable in cognitive science, according to which a debates related to introspection, led the behavior- mental state is defined by its functional role, ists to reject consciousness as a plausible scientific rather than by its intrinsic structure and its issue. Instead, behaviorists sought to bring psychol- implementation. In other words, a functional ogy into the scientific domain by restricting it to model of the mind (or of an operation that is objective data and reproducible methods. Even the achieved by the mind) involves mental states so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ that transformed that are causally related to sensory inputs psychology during the second half of the twentieth and other mental states, and behavior. century did not favor a renewal of interest in con- Homunculus – Literally, ‘little man,’ in Latin, sciousness. Indeed, the purpose of the cognitive that is in the context of cognitive theories of approach was to reintroduce the notion of internal consciousness, a conscious observer, which representations or mental states, not the notion of is at the top of the cognitive system. consciousness per se. Furthermore, an important A Homunculus is a hypothetical construct new assumption was that internal representations that operates (i.e., with no further were largely unavailable to consciousness. None- explanation) the very operation that is theless, in this new information-processing per- supposed to be explained. Thus, a theory spective, cognitive scientists developed several that relies on a homunculus at some point is key elements that largely influenced the forthcom- incomplete in the same extend. ing cognitive theories of consciousness. These pre- cursors included new models of attention and working memory, and also new concepts, such as the distinction between modules and central pro- Introduction cesses, or that between automatic and controlled processes. Consciousness is probably the most privileged In the present article, we will first overview topic in psychology. The study of consciousness the precursors that allowed the development of is considered to be at the origin of the separat- cognitive theories of consciousness. Then we will ion between psychology and philosophy during present a selection of influential contemporary the nineteenth century, as psychologists were accounts of consciousness. These theories will be 135 Encyclopedia of Consciousness (2009), vol. 1, pp. 135-146 Author's personal copy 136 Cognitive Theories of Consciousness grouped according to three main themes: theories a huge quantity of information becomes available that consider consciousness to result from specific to the rest of the system. However, the central architectural elements within the cognitive system; system is very limited in terms of computational theories claiming that some features of conscious- resources. Hence, a selection mechanism is needed ness are in fact illusory; and theories that focus to prevent overload. As such, attention operates on the relation between consciousness and learn- by selecting the most relevant information and by ing. We will conclude this article by emphasiz- filtering out that which is irrelevant. Then, the most ing the common challenges that current cognitive relevant information, which is under the focus models of consciousness have to face: the pressure of attention, becomes the target of the central sys- from the philosophically defined hard problem, on tem and can thus benefit from deeper and more one side, and the pressure from neurobiological enriched processing. Once again, although con- evidences, on the other side. sciousness was not the main concern, one conse- quence of attentional selection was that it allowed the target information to become conscious. In this Precursors for a Cognitive perspective, attention and consciousness are two Perspective on Consciousness tightly related notions. The notion of short-term memory put forward In this section, we highlight the most influential by George Miller and later extended to the notion precursors for a theory of consciousness. Most of of working memory is also an important precursor. these elements emerged during the cognitive rev- For example, in their model of working memory, olution. Although they were originally sketched Baddeley and Hitch relied on a central executive out in light of an information-processing perspec- system, which has top-down control over the dis- tive, those elements are now largely linked to the tinct specific subsystems, namely the phonological dissociation between conscious and unconscious loop and the visuospatial sketchpad. Here, the processing. content of working memory may be roughly equated with the content of consciousness, an aspect that will also be important for future cogni- Attention and the Central Executive tive theories of consciousness. Various influential models developed in the 1960s Norman and Shallice, in turn, proposed a model referred to a central processor, a central executive of action selection implicating a supervisory atten- system, or a supervisory system. Processing within tional system. This central system receives sensory the central system can be considered as analogous to evidence and determines the appropriate beha- conscious processing, even if the word consciousness vior by selecting instruction schemes for action was still largely banished in the scientific commu- mechanisms. In addition, the supervisory atten- nity. This system is at the top of the hierarchy in the tional system can be modulated by the goals of cognitive architecture: it is involved in higher-order the organism, and it is primarily involved when a computations (decision, monitoring, planning, etc.) new or critical situation appears. Here too, the and leads to selection and control over lower-level central part of the model shares some properties subsystems. As in many contemporary accounts of that are associated with consciousness, namely consciousness, the central system was considered flexibility, reactivity regarding unexpected situa- the most integrative element of the cognitive system, tions, decision, and control over behavior. In sum, these influential early models depicted granting flexibility and control over behavior. Another key element was the simple but power- the global architecture of the cognitive system by ful metaphor of attention as a filtering mechanism emphasizing the following components: sensory that was put forward by Broadbent. In a nutshell, inputs in the periphery that are processed in par- peripheral processors in this theory provide sen- allel in multiple channels, attention that performs sory information to the central system dealing selection upon these sources of information, a with control and decisions. Because multiple sen- working memory component that keeps tracks sory channels are continuously acting in parallel, of the selected information, and finally a central Encyclopedia of Consciousness (2009), vol. 1, pp. 135-146 Author's personal copy Cognitive Theories of Consciousness 137 system that acts as a supervisor. But one major were assumed to be conscious. These dichotomies limitation of this view is that it falls into the between central and peripheral, controlled and homunculus trap, when it comes to the question automatic,

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