Abstract
Human activity is rife with momentary control problems: hesitations, dysfluencies, false starts, memory lapses, and errors. This seems rather strange, because normal human action also tends to be effective, complex, adaptive, and fast. Clearly our action control system is the product of many millions of years of evolution: Why then is it so prone to control problems? This is a paradox that emerges most clearly in the case of inadvertent slips, which may be defined as actions that reveal a mismatch between a reportable intention and overt performance (Baars, 1988; MacKay, 1987; Norman, 1981; Reason, 1979).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abrams, K., & Bever, T. G. (1969). Syntactic structure modifies attention during speech perception. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 21, 280–290.
Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Baars, B. J. (1977). The planning of speech: Is there semantic editing prior to speech articulation? Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, Department of Psychology.
Baars, B. J. (1980a). The competing plans hypothesis: An heuristic viewpoint on the causes of errors in speech. In H. W. Dechert & M. Raupach (Eds.), Temporal variables in speech: Studies in honour of Frieda Goldman-Eisler. The Hague: Mouton.
Baars, B. J. (1980b). On eliciting predictable speech errors in the laboratory. In V. A. Fromkin (Ed.), Errors in linguistic performance: Slips of the tongue, ear, pen, and hand. New York: Academic Press.
Baars, B. J. (1983). Conscious contents provide the nervous system with coherent, global information. In R. Davidson, G. Schwartz, & D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness and self-regulation (Vol. 3, pp. 47–76). New York: Plenum Press.
Baars, B. J. (1987). What is conscious in the control of action? A modern ideomotor theory of voluntary control. In D. Gorfein & R. R. Hoffman (Ed.), Learning and memory: The Ebbinghaus Centennial Symposium, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Baars, B. J. (1988). A cognitive theory of consciousness. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Baars, B. J., & MacKay, D. G. (1978). Experimentally eliciting phonetic and sentential speech errors: Methods, implications, and work in progress. Language in Society, 7, 105–109.
Baars, B. J., & Mattson, M. E. (1981). Consciousness and intention: A framework and some evidence. Cognition and Brain Theory, 4(3), 247–263.
Baars, B. J., & Motley, M. T. (1976). Spoonerisms as sequencer conflicts: Evidence from artificially elicited errors. American Journal of Psychology, 89, 467–484.
Baars, B. J., Motley, M. T., & MacKay, D. G. (1975). Output editing for lexical status in artificially elicited slips of the tongue. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 382–391.
Berg, T. (1987). The case against accommodation: Evidence from German speech error data. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 277–299.
Bower, G. H., & Cohen, P. R. (1982). Emotional influences in memory and thinking: Data and theory. In M. S. Clarke & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Affect and cognition (pp. 291–331). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Broadbent, D. E. (1958). Perception and communication. New York: Pergamon Press.
Butterworth, B. L. (1980). Some constraints on models of language production. In B. L. Butterworth (Ed.), Language production: Vol. 1. Speech and talk. London: Academic Press.
Butterworth, B. L. (1982). Speech errors: Old data in search of new theories. In A. Cutler (Ed.), Slips of the tongue. Amsterdam: Mouton.
Dell, G. S. (1985). Positive feedback in hierarchial connectionist models: Applications to language production. Cognitive Science, 9, 3–23.
Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review, 93, 283–321.
Fay, D. (1980). Transformational errors. In V. A. Fromkin (Ed.), Errors in linguistic performance (pp. 111–122). New York: Academic Press.
Fodor, J. A. (1983). The modularity of mind: An essay in faculty psychology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Freud, S. (1901/1938). The psychopathology of everyday life. Trans. A. A. Brill, in A. A. Brill (Ed.), The basic writings of Sigmund Freud. New York: Basic Books.
Fromkin, V. A. (1968). Speculations on performance models. Journal of Linguistics, 4, 47–68.
Fromkin, V. A. (Ed.). (1973). Speech errors as linguistic evidence. The Hague: Mouton.
Fromkin. V. A. (Ed.). (1980). Errors in linguistic performance: Slips of the tongue, ear, pen, and hand. New York: Academic Press.
Garrett, M. F. (1980). The limits of accommodation: Arguments for independent processing levels in sentence production. In V. Fromkin (Ed.), Errors of linguistic performance: Slips of the pen, tongue, and hand (pp. 263–271). New York: Academic Press.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1972). Pauses, clauses, and sentences. Language and Speech, 15, 103–113.
Gould, S. J. (1982). The panda’s thumb: More reflections on natural history. New York: Norton.
Greene, P. (1972). Problems of organization of motor systems. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 3, 303–338.
Harley, T. A. (1984). A critique of top-down independent levels models of speech production: Evidence from non-plan-internal speech errors. Cognitive Science, 8, 191–219.
LaBerge, D. (1980). Unitization and automaticity in perception. In J. H. Flowers (Ed.), 1980 Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (pp. 53–71). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Langer, E. J. (1989). Mindfulness. New York: Addison-Wesley.
Langer, E. J., & Imber, L. G. (1979). When practice makes imperfect: Debilitating effects of overlearning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11), 2014–2024.
Levelt, W. J. M. (1983). Monitoring and self-repair in speech. Cognition, 14, 41–104.
Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. Shankweiler, D., & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1967). Perception of the speech code. Psychological Review, 78(2), 130–140.
MacKay, D. G. (1981). Speech errors: Retrospect and prospect. In V. A. Fromkin (Ed.), Errors in linguistic performance (pp. 319–332). New York: Academic Press.
MacKay, D. G. (1982). The problems of flexibility, fluency, and speed-accuracy trade-off in skilled behavior. Psychological Review, 89, 483–506.
MacKay, D. G. (1987). The organization of perception and action: A theory of language and other cognitive skills. New York: Springer.
Mandler, G. A. (1975). Mind and emotion. New York: Wiley.
Marslen-Wilson, W. D., & Welsh, A. (1978). Processing interactions and lexical access during word recognition in continuous speech. Cognitive Psychology, 10, 29–63.
Mattson, M. E. (1987). Sources of competing activation in action errors. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Psychology, State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Mattson, M. E., & Baars, B. J. (1985). Competition in activation networks: A test using laboratory-induced action blends and spoonerisms. Paper given at the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, MA.
Morton, J. (1970). A functional model of memory. In D. A. Norman (Ed.), Models of human memory. New York: Academic Press.
Motley, M. T., & Baars, B. J. (1976). Semantic bias effects on the outcomes of verbal slips. Cognition, 4, 177–187.
Motley, M. T., & Baars, B. J. (1978). Laboratory verification of ”Freudian” slips of the tongue as evidence of pre-articulatory semantic editing. In B. Ruken (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 2, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Motley, M. T., & Baars, B. J. (1979). Effects of cognitive set upon laboratory-induced verbal (Freudian) slips. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 22, 421–432.
Motley, M. T., Baars, B. J., & Camden, C. T. (1979). Personality and situational influences upon verbal slips. Human Communication Research, 5, 195–202.
Motley, M. T., Baars, B. J., & Camden, C. T. (1981). Syntactic criteria in prearticulatory editing: Evidence from laboratory-induced slips of the tongue. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 20(5), 503–522.
Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Norman, D. A. (1976). Memory and attention. New York: Wiley.
Norman, D. A. (1981). Categorization of action slips. Psychological Review, 88, 1–15.
Norman, D. A., & Shallice, T. (1980). Attention and action: Willed and automatic control of behavior. La Jolla: Center for Human Information Processing, University of California at San Diego.
Reason, J. T. (1979). Actions not as planned: The price of automatization. In G. Underwood & R. Stevens (Eds.), Aspects of consciousness: Vol. 1. Psychological issues (pp. 67–89). London: Academic Press.
Reason, J. T. (1982, June). Learning from absent-minded mistakes. SSRC Newsletter, 46, 19–26.
Reason, J. T. (1983). Absent-mindedness and cognitive control. In J. Harris & P. Morris (Eds.), Everyday memory, actions and absentmindedness (pp. 19–26, 113-132). New York: Academic Press.
Reason, J. T. (1984a). Lapses of attention in everyday life. In R. Parasuraman & D. R. Davies (Eds.), Varieties of attention (pp. 515–549). New York: Academic Press.
Reason, J. T. (1984b). Little slips and big disasters. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews,9(2), 3–15.
Reason, J. T. (1992). Human error. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reason, J., & Mycielska, K. (1982). Absent-minded? The psychology of mental lapses and everyday errors. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Shallice, T. (1978). The dominant action system: An information-processing approach to consciousness. In K. S. Pope & J. L. Singer (Eds.), The stream of consciousness: Scientific investigation into the flow of experience. New York: Plenum Press.
Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: 2. Perceptual learning, automatic attending, and a general theory. Psychological Review, 84, 127–190.
Sternberg, S. (1966). High-speech scanning in human memory. Science, 153, 652–654.
Tversky, A., and Kahneman, A. (1973). Availability: An heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 2, 207–232.
Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Wundt, W. (1912/1973). An introduction to psychology. London: G. Allen. (Reprinted, New York: Arno Press.)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Baars, B.J. (1992). The Many Uses of Error. In: Baars, B.J. (eds) Experimental Slips and Human Error. Cognition and Language. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1164-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1164-3_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-1166-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-1164-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive