Measuring the Frequency of Inner-Experience Characteristics.

Inner experience is widely accepted by psychologists and lay people as being straightforwardly observable: Inner speech, visual images, feelings, and so on are understood to be directly apprehendable "before the footlights of consciousness." Many psychologists hold that such characteristics of inner experience play substantial theoretical roles and have applied significance across a wide range of cognitive, affective, performance, and clinical situations. If so, the frequency of occurrence of these characteristics is of fundamental importance.

Measuring the Frequency of Inner-Experience Characteristics by Self-Report: The Nevada Inner Experience Questionnaire.

Descriptive experience sampling has suggested that there are five frequently occurring phenomena of inner experience: inner speaking, inner seeing, unsymbolized thinking, feelings, and sensory awareness. Descriptive experience sampling is a labor- and skill-intensive procedure, so it would be desirable to estimate the frequency of these phenomena by questionnaire. However, appropriate questionnaires either do not exist or have substantial limitations.

Pristine Inner Experience and Descriptive Experience Sampling: Implications for Psychology.

Pristine inner experience is that which is directly present in awareness before it is distorted by attempts at observation or interpretation. Many psychological methods, including most introspective methods, attempt to measure some aspect of pristine inner experience (thoughts, feelings, mental imagery, sensations, etc.).

Investigating pristine inner experience: implications for experience sampling and questionnaires.

We argue that inquiring about directly apprehended ("pristine") inner experience requires four overlapping methodological characteristics: effectively limiting investigation to specific, clearly identified moments; effectively limiting investigation to pristine experience; bracketing presuppositions; and iteratively acquiring skills. We compare and contrast Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), other (non-DES) experience sampling methods, and questionnaires and conclude that whereas non-DES sampling methods and questionnaires appear to inquire about pristine inner experience, they fall short on all four methodological counts and therefore might be better understood as investigating an ill-defined mixture of presuppositions, judgments about experience, and pristine experience itself. Typical experience sampling studies and questionnaires can be valid and useful, but their validity and utility does not (or at least does not necessarily) arise from their phenomenological fidelity.

Toward a phenomenology of inner speaking.

Inner speaking is a common and widely discussed phenomenon of inner experience. Based on our studies of inner experience using Descriptive Experience Sampling (a qualitative method designed to produce high fidelity descriptions of randomly selected pristine inner experience), we advance an initial phenomenology of inner speaking. Inner speaking does occur in many, though certainly not all, moments of pristine inner experience.

Toward a phenomenology of feelings.

Our understanding of emotion cannot be complete without an understanding of feelings, the experiential aspect of emotion. Despite their importance, little effort has been devoted to the careful apprehension of feelings. Based on our apprehension of many randomly selected moments of pristine inner experience, we present a preliminary phenomenology of feelings.

The phenomena of inner experience.

This study provides a survey of phenomena that present themselves during moments of naturally occurring inner experience. In our previous studies using Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) we have discovered five frequently occurring phenomena--inner speech, inner seeing, unsymbolized thinking, feelings, and sensory awareness. Here we quantify the relative frequency of these phenomena.