Conscious contents as reflexive processes: Evidence from the habituation of high-level cognitions

Bhangal, Sabrina; Allen, Allison K.; Geisler, Mark W.; Morsella, Ezequiel

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2016.02.012

Cited by 15 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…This accuracy in performance suggests that subjects did in fact experience phonological imagery (i.e., /k/, /œ/, and /t/) in response to the visual object, for detecting that a word rhymes with another word requires the retrieval of the phonological form of the word, or, at the least, the retrieval of the coda of the word. In RITs, subjects report during funneled debriefing that they (a) intended to follow the instructions (and thereby not have the undesired imagery) and (b) attempted some strategies to try to thwart the RIT effect (Allen et al, 2013; Bhangal et al, 2015, 2016, 2018; Cho et al, 2014; Cushing et al, 2017; Dou et al, 2018; Merrick et al, 2015; see related, new evidence for this in Funneled Debriefing section).…”

Section: Reflexive Imagery Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulus-elicited involuntary insights and syntactic processing.

Bui¹,

Ghafur²,

Yankulova³

et al. 2023

Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice

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Thoughts from high-level processes often arise involuntarily and in response to external stimuli. The reflexive imagery task (RIT) has been used to identify the kinds of conscious thoughts and imagery that can arise involuntarily in response to stimuli. In most RITs, subjects are presented with stimuli and instructed to not perform a mental operation in response to the stimuli. For example, subjects are presented with 2 dots after having been instructed to not count any objects. Often, subjects cannot suppress the operation and experience the involuntary imagery (e.g., “two”). RITs have not examined whether such effects arise for insights or syntactic processing. In our “insight” RIT, subjects were presented with 20 word pairs (e.g., wax–flame) and instructed to not think of any associates (e.g., “candle”). Subjects thought (involuntarily) of associates for 68% of the pairs. In our “syntax” RIT, subjects learned to associate nonsense visual symbols with words (e.g., “green” and “sun”). After training, in the read condition, subjects read the strings formed from pairs of these symbols (e.g., “green sun”). In the suppress condition, subjects were instructed to suppress reading. Subjects reported involuntary reading of these strings on 48% of the 20 trials. The mean accuracy rate of the judgments regarding nonsensicality (e.g., green sun) in the suppress condition was high (86%), corroborating that subjects were reading the sentences. Together, the data from our new tasks shed light on the capabilities of the mechanisms that, in everyday life, engender the often “high-level” contents that occupy our conscious minds.

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Section: Reflexive Imagery Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulus-elicited involuntary insights and syntactic processing.

Bui¹,

Ghafur²,

Yankulova³

et al. 2023

Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice

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“…There were 10 unique photographs per sign and subjects never saw these stimuli again during the critical trials. Using different stimuli on each of the 10 training trials diminishes the effects of stimulusspecific habituation (Bhangal et al, 2016) and also increases the likelihood of "stimulus generalization" across the entire stimulus class, so that training-based effects will arise for all school zones, for example.…”

Section: Training Sessionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Generation of Involuntary Mental Imagery in an Ecologically-Valid Task

Velasquez

Gazzaley

Toyoda³

et al. 2021

Front. Psychol.

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Laboratory tasks (e.g., the flanker task) reveal that incidental stimuli (e.g., distractors) can reliably trigger involuntary conscious imagery. Can such involuntary effects, involving competing representations, arise during dual-task conditions? Another concern about these laboratory tasks is whether such effects arise in highly ecologically-valid conditions. For example, do these effects arise from tasks involving dynamic stimuli (e.g., simulations of semi-automated driving experiences)? The data from our experiment suggest that the answer to our two questions is yes. Subjects were presented with video footage of the kinds of events that one would observe if one were seated in the driver's seat of a semi-automated vehicle. Before being presented with this video footage, subjects had been trained to respond to street signs according to laboratory techniques that cause stimulus-elicited involuntary imagery. After training, in the Respond condition, subjects responded to the signs; in the Suppress condition, subjects were instructed to not respond to the signs in the video footage. Subjects in the Suppress condition reported involuntary imagery on a substantive proportion of the trials. Such involuntary effects arose even under dual-task conditions (while performing the n-back task or psychomotor vigilance task). The present laboratory task has implications for semi-automated driving, because the safe interaction between driver and vehicle requires that the communicative signals from vehicle to driver be effective at activating the appropriate cognitions and behavioral inclinations. In addition, our data from the dual-task conditions provide constraints for theoretical models of cognitive resources.

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“…Additional evidence that the RIT effect is involuntary stems from research revealing that the nature of the effect resembles involuntary, reflex-like processes. For example, in Bhangal et al (2016a), the RIT effect was less likely to arise (i.e., it habituated) after the repeated presentation of a given object (e.g., CAT presented for ten consecutive trials), which suggests that the RIT effect is activated in a reflex-like manner.…”

Section: Evidence That Subjects Intend To Follow Instructions and Thamentioning

confidence: 99%

EEG Correlates of Involuntary Cognitions in the Reflexive Imagery Task

et al. 2020

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The Reflexive Imagery Task (RIT) reveals that the activation of sets can result in involuntary cognitions that are triggered by external stimuli. In the basic RIT, subjects are presented with an image of an object (e.g., CAT) and instructed to not think of the name of the object. Involuntary subvocalizations of the name (the RIT effect) arise on roughly 80% of the trials. We conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study to explore the neural correlates of the RIT effect. Subjects were presented with one object at a time in one condition and two objects simultaneously in another condition. Five regions were defined by electrode sites: frontal (F3-F4), parietal (P3-P4), temporal (T3-T4), right hemisphere (F4-P4), and left hemisphere (F3-P3). We focused on the alpha (8-13 Hz), beta (13-30 Hz), delta (0.01-4 Hz), and theta (4-8 Hz) frequencies.

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Conscious contents as reflexive processes: Evidence from the habituation of high-level cognitions

Cited by 15 publications

References 49 publications

Stimulus-elicited involuntary insights and syntactic processing.

Stimulus-elicited involuntary insights and syntactic processing.

The Generation of Involuntary Mental Imagery in an Ecologically-Valid Task

EEG Correlates of Involuntary Cognitions in the Reflexive Imagery Task

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