Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsOriginsHow It WorksThe Brain on AutopilotLimitations
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Origins
How It Works
The Brain on Autopilot
Limitations
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Incognitive psychology, parallel processing refers to the ability to deal with multiple stimuli simultaneously. One example is driving. When driving a car, we don’t focus on driving exclusively; we also listen to music, carry on a conversation with passengers, and look for the street where our destination is located. Our ability to process different kinds of stimuli at once enables our brain to carry out all these tasks at once.
This article discusses the discovery of parallel processing, how it works, and the limitations of this brain function.
Incognitive psychology, parallel processing refers to the ability to deal with multiple stimuli simultaneously.
Origins of Parallel Processing Theory
How Parallel Processing Works
In parallel processing, we take in multiple forms of information simultaneously. This is especially important in vision. For example, when you see a bus coming toward you, you see itscolor, shape, depth, and motion all at once. Assessing those things one at a time would take far too long—but seeing them together, you can quickly determine what you’re seeing and decide how to respond.
In this instance, parallel processing helps you recognize that you must move before the bus gets too close. We engage in this process constantly, even though we’re not conscious of it.
Parallel processing also relies on a combination of top-down and bottom-up processing.
Although top-down and bottom-up processing seem incompatible, parallel processing relies on both at the same time to help you understand stimuli.
Say you see a person jump off a pier, and then you hear splashing. Bottom-up processing uses your senses to build a picture of the incoming data. In contrast, top-down processing of sight and sound wouldtells us that a person simply jumped into a body of water. Thus, with parallel processing, we can efficiently process and understand the whole of all the stimuli we take in.
Automaticity: The Brain’s Autopilot
If you practice an action repeatedly, you eventually become so skilled at the task that you can perform it with little or no thought. For example, someone who types on a daily basis soon becomes so proficient at it that they use only minimal brain resources to do so. This is calledautomaticity.
Automaticity is the ability to act without conscious thought, which happens when a behavior becomes over-learned.
There are degrees of automaticity. For example, experienced drivers can follow navigation directions and perform other tasks from behind the wheel more easily than less experienced drivers.
Automaticity enables people to perform impressive feats of parallel processing. For instance, in one study, students practiced reading for comprehension while writing down dictated words that they categorized for meaning. The participants learned to perform these tasks without difficulty over several weeks of practice. That’s because writing down the dictated words became automatic and no longer drew participants' attention away from what they were reading.
Limits to Parallel Processing
Psychologists have long tried to determine how much information people can process in parallel. So far, they’ve arrived at different answers, but the general takeaway is that we can process only so much information simultaneously before we must deploy other strategies, such as processing information serially. This may be less efficient.
Serial ProcessingThis theory proposes that we process information in the order received. It first enters short-term memory, where it resides until another bit of information bumps the first into long-term memory.
Serial Processing
This theory proposes that we process information in the order received. It first enters short-term memory, where it resides until another bit of information bumps the first into long-term memory.
Jessica Peterson/Getty Images
However, without practice or great concentration, we can typically use a single cognitive system to process more than one piece of information at the same time. For example, think about how difficult it is to rub your belly and pat your head simultaneously; a single cognitive motor system controls our hands. This makes it challenging to give processes that work in opposition to one another—like rubbing one part of your body and patting another—equal attention, and as a result, do them equally well.
Information Processing Theory in Psychology
A Word From Verywell
The fascinating study of information processing proposes a few different theories for how the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves memories. Automaticity—when your brain learns a task so well that it doesn’t require focused attention to perform it—can help free up cognitive resources that we can then apply to these tasks.
3 Sources
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Anderson JR.Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications. 7th ed. New York: Worth Publishers; 2010.
Spelke E, Hirst W, Neisser U.Skills of divided attention.Cognition. 1976;4(3):215-230. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(76)90018-4
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