nonconscious

Nonconscious refers to mental processes that operate without conscious awareness or intentional control. In psychology and cognitive neuroscience, nonconscious processes can influence perception, judgment, and action even when a person is not aware of them. The term is often contrasted with conscious processing, which involves awareness, deliberate attention, and reportability. It is not a single mental faculty but a collection of processes that range from automatic perception to implicit memory.

Examples include automatic motor skills (habits), procedural knowledge, perceptual priming, implicitly learned associations, and autonomic regulations such as arousal and homeostatic adjustments. Nonconscious processing can direct attention, influence choices, and shape preferences without deliberate reflection.

Researchers study nonconscious processing with methods such as subliminal or masked stimuli, priming experiments, and neuroimaging showing activation without report of awareness. Some forms of perceptual information can be processed without conscious perception, as in blindsight, where individuals respond to stimuli they say they do not see.

Debate exists about the boundaries and relationships among conscious, preconscious, subconscious, and unconscious. In contemporary science, 'nonconscious' is used as a practical term to denote processes outside conscious awareness, not to imply mythic hidden meaning. The boundaries are porous; some processes can become conscious with attention or introspection, while others remain inaccessible.