Automatism Automatisms are sequences of activity that occur without conscious control. They may be simple and repetitive ( tic -like) or complex and are usually natural-looking but purposeless; for example, repeatedly going through the motions of buttering a piece of bread when there is no bread there. Automatic behavior is not usually recalled afterwards. Copyright Notice Adapted from Wikipedia. Text is available under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 ; additional terms may apply.