chapter 6
Information Overload
T
he human brain is amazingly complex. It processes
large amounts of information incredibly quickly.
Although you are generally aware of your deliberate actions,
many behaviors you perform are automatic and nearly
imperceptible. Think about the last time you had a conver-
sation with someone. Did you have to explicitly remember
the laws of grammar in order to communicate? We doubt
you planned which word would be the subject, which word
would be the verb, which word would be the object, and so
on. Your ability to speak with grammatical correctness
comes naturally, because your brain is hardwired to compute
and process information at a rapid speed. Likewise, certain
other cognitive abilities— such as attention— rely on auto-
matic, unconscious processing to coordinate large- scale
behaviors.
We will explore how explicit and implicit attention pro-
cessing interacts with anxiety, but first it may be useful to
clarify exactly what we mean by the terms “explicit,”
“implicit,” “conscious,” and “unconscious.”