Merrick Christina, Farnia Melika, Jantz Tiffany K, Gazzaley Adam, Morsella Ezequiel
Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States.
Conscious Cogn. 2015 May;33:217-25. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.12.014. Epub 2015 Jan 28.
The stream of consciousness often appears whimsical and free from external control. Recent advances, however, reveal that the stream is more susceptible to external influence than previously assumed. Thoughts can be triggered by external stimuli in a manner that is involuntary, systematic, and nontrivial. Based on these advances, our experimental manipulation systematically triggered a sequence of, not one, but two involuntary thoughts. Participants were instructed to (a) not subvocalize the name of visual objects and (b) not count the number of letters comprising object names. On a substantial proportion of trials, participants experienced both kinds of involuntary thoughts. Each thought arose from distinct, high-level processes (naming versus counting). This is the first demonstration of the induction of two involuntary thoughts into the stream of consciousness. Stimulus word length influenced dependent measures systematically. Our findings are relevant to many fields associated with the study of consciousness, including attention, imagery, and action control.
意识流常常显得异想天开且不受外部控制。然而，最近的进展表明，意识流比之前所认为的更容易受到外部影响。思想可以由外部刺激以一种非自愿、系统且重要的方式触发。基于这些进展，我们的实验操纵系统地触发了一系列（不是一个而是两个）非自愿性的思想。参与者被指示：（a）不要默念视觉对象的名称；（b）不要数构成对象名称的字母数量。在相当一部分试验中，参与者经历了这两种非自愿性的思想。每种思想都源自不同的高级过程（命名与计数）。这是首次证明将两种非自愿性思想引入意识流。刺激词的长度系统地影响了相关测量指标。我们的发现与意识研究相关的许多领域都有关联，包括注意力、意象和行动控制。
