Illusions of awareness resulting from dissociations between

experience and meta-consciousness

Jonathan Schooler
University of Pittsburgh
e-mail: schooler+@pitt.edu
Great strides in understanding various aspects of human cognition have been gained
by exploring the specific situations under which various perceptual and memory
illusions can occur. This talk explores whether illusions of awareness may offer
similar insights into the nature of consciousness. A distinction is drawn between
the basic experience of consciousness and ones explicit awareness of the contents
of that experience. Two types of illusions of awareness follow from the notion that
meta-consciousness involves the intermittent explicit re-representation of the
contents of consciousness.

Temporal illusions can occur when individuals

temporarily fail to attend to the contents of their own experience. Such temporal
illusions are illustrated by research on zoning-out while reading which illustrates
how failing to notice the contents of ones own experience can lead to entirely selfdefeating behavior. Once meta-consciousness is triggered, translation illusions may
occur if the re-representation process misrepresents the original experience. Such
translation illusions are particularly apt to occur when the experience is difficult to
verbalize. Although illusions of awareness may be relatively rare, they nevertheless
offer a critical boundary conditions for understanding the nature of human
consciousness.