TY - JOUR
T1 - Language facilitates introspection
T2 - Verbal mind-wandering has privileged access to consciousness
AU - Bastian, Mikaël
AU - Lerique, Sébastien
AU - Adam, Vincent
AU - Franklin, Michael S.
AU - Schooler, Jonathan W.
AU - Sackur, Jérôme
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - Introspection and language are the cognitive prides of humankind, but their interactions in healthy cognition remain unclear. Episodes of mind-wandering, where personal thoughts often go unnoticed for some time before being introspected, offer a unique opportunity to study the role of language in introspection. In this paper, we show that inner speech facilitates awareness of mind-wandering. In two experiments, we either interfered with verbal working memory, via articulatory suppression (Exp. 1), or entrained it, via presentation of verbal material (Exp. 2), and measured the resulting awareness of mind-wandering. Articulatory suppression decreased the likelihood to spontaneously notice mind-wandering, whereas verbal material increased retrospective awareness of mind-wandering. In addition, an ecological study using smartphones confirmed that inner speech vividness positively predicted mind-wandering awareness (Exp. 3). Together, these findings support the view that inner speech facilitates introspection of one's thoughts, and therefore provides empirical evidence for a positive relation between language and consciousness.
AB - Introspection and language are the cognitive prides of humankind, but their interactions in healthy cognition remain unclear. Episodes of mind-wandering, where personal thoughts often go unnoticed for some time before being introspected, offer a unique opportunity to study the role of language in introspection. In this paper, we show that inner speech facilitates awareness of mind-wandering. In two experiments, we either interfered with verbal working memory, via articulatory suppression (Exp. 1), or entrained it, via presentation of verbal material (Exp. 2), and measured the resulting awareness of mind-wandering. Articulatory suppression decreased the likelihood to spontaneously notice mind-wandering, whereas verbal material increased retrospective awareness of mind-wandering. In addition, an ecological study using smartphones confirmed that inner speech vividness positively predicted mind-wandering awareness (Exp. 3). Together, these findings support the view that inner speech facilitates introspection of one's thoughts, and therefore provides empirical evidence for a positive relation between language and consciousness.
KW - Attention
KW - Consciousness
KW - Inner speech
KW - Meta-awareness
KW - Mind-wandering
KW - Verbal working memory
U2 - 10.1016/j.concog.2017.01.002
DO - 10.1016/j.concog.2017.01.002
M3 - Article
C2 - 28161598
AN - SCOPUS:85012249444
SN - 1053-8100
VL - 49
SP - 86
EP - 97
JO - Consciousness and Cognition
JF - Consciousness and Cognition
ER -