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The Stream of Consciousness: VI. Relevancies from Imagination, Cognition and Personality

Thomas Natsoulas

Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 1994 DOI: 10.2190/29u6-lbfx-qd98-ggmb (opens in new tab)

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Characteristics Review Peer reviewed
Citations 9
Key findings The article reviews selected interpretations and facts about the stream of consciousness from Imagination, Cognition and Personality, including Aranosian's account of auditory musical imagery during composing and improvising, Steinberg's argument that stream-of-consciousness literary technique poorly simulates a stream of consciousness compared with computer programming, and Davis and Johnson's random thought-sampling experiment in which subjects reported no mental activity at all ten per cent of the time.

Abstract

Quite naturally, Imagination, Cognition and Personality is the literal context of the present series of articles, which aims to examine what is known and knowledgeably held about the nature and character of the referents of William James's concept of the stream of consciousness. The sixth and seventh installments focus on selected relevant interpretations and facts from Imagination, Cognition and Personality. These relevancies include 1) Christopher M. Aranosian's account of those temporal sections of the stream of consciousness during composing and improvising that consist of auditory musical imagery, 2) Erwin R. Steinberg's argument against the stream-of-consciousness technique of writing literature, as providing a poor simulation of a stream of consciousness, especially when compared to what might be accomplished by programming a present-day computer, and 3) Lee Tilford Davis and Peder J. Johnson's result of no mental activity at all reported ten per cent of the time by the subjects in an experiment using random thought-sampling.

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