External control of the stream of consciousness: Stimulus-based effects on involuntary thought sequences.

Abstract

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.