Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-5-2014
Abstract
Although many responses to odorous stimuli are mediated without olfactory information being consciously processed, some olfactory behaviors require conscious information processing. I will here contrast situations in which olfactory information is processed consciously to situations in which it is processed non-consciously. This contrastive analysis reveals that conscious information processing is required when an organism is faced with tasks in which there are many behavioral options available. I therefore propose that it is the evolutionary function of conscious information processing to guide behaviors in situations in which the organism has to choose between many possible responses.
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Comments
This article originally appeared in Frontiers in Psychology, available at DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00062
© 2014 Keller. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.