This study provides a survey of phenomena that present themselves during moments of naturally occurring inner expe- rience. 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 rel- ative frequency of these phenomena. We used DES to describe 10 randomly identified moments of inner experience from each of 30 participants selected from a stratified sample of college students. We found that each of the five phenomena occurred in approximately one quarter of sampled moments, that the frequency of these phenomena varied widely across individuals, that there were no significant gender differences in the relative frequencies of these phenomena, and that higher frequencies of inner speech were associated with lower levels of psychological distress.

Key words: descriptive experience sampling, consciousness, awareness, inner experience, individual differences, inner speech, inner seeing, unsymbolized thinking, feelings, sensory awareness

Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is an approach to apprehending and describing pristine inner experience in high fidelity. The DES participant wears a random beeper in her natural environments. The beep cues the participant to jot down notes about her inner experience that was ongoing at the moment of the beep. A subsequent expositional interview produces a description of the beeped experience. It is likely that the fidelity of those descriptions iteratively increases across sampling days as participant and investigator acquire skill at bracketing presuppositions about the nature of the participant’s experience.

Open peer commentary on the article “Excavating Belief About Past Experience: Experiential Dynamics of the Reflective Act” by Urban Kordeš & Ema Demšar. Upshot: Based on 40 years of practice using descriptive experience sampling, I clarify three important ways that my view of reflective inquiry differs from that of Kordeš and Demšar. I differentiate between investigations that do and do not explore pristine experience, discuss the risks of using the feeling of veracity as a guide to an investigation, and distinguish between two importantly different kinds of iteration.

Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is a method for exploring inner experience. DES subjects carry a random beeper in natural environments; when the beep sounds, they capture their inner experience, jot down notes about it, and report it to an investigator in a subsequent expositional interview. DES is a fundamentally idiographic method, describing faithfully the pristine inner experiences of persons. Subsequently, DES can be used in a nomothetic way to describe the characteristics of groups of people who share some common characteristic. This paper describes DES and compares it to Petitmengin’s [Phenomenol Cogn Sci, this issue] second-person interview method.

Unsymbolized thinking – the experience of an explicit, differentiated thought that does not include the experience of words, images, or any other symbols – is a frequently occurring yet little known phenomenon. Unsymbolized thinking is a distinct phenomenon, not merely, for example, an incompletely formed inner speech or a vague image, and is one of the five most common features of inner experience (the other four: inner speech, inner seeing, feelings, and sensory awareness). Despite its high frequency, many people, includ- ing many professional students of consciousness, believe that such an experience is impos- sible. However, because the existence of unsymbolized thinking indicates that much experienced thinking takes place without any experience of words or other symbols, acknowledging the existence of unsymbolized thinking may have substantial theoretical import.

Key words: descriptive experience sampling, phenomenal consciousness, thinking, wordless thinking, imageless thought, inner speech.

It is claimed that psychological science can obtain accurate reports about people’s inner experience. We reconsider three criticisms of introspection: Nisbett and Wilson’s critical review of introspection, the failure of introspectionists to agree about imageless thought, and Skinner’s behavioral position. We show that rather than dismissing introspection, these criticisms point the way towards technical improvements in the methods used to produce accurate descriptions of inner experience. One such method, Descriptive Experience Sampling, is described and used as an example to illustrate our conclusion that, although exploring inner experience is not trivially easy, it can provide important knowledge for many areas in cognitive science.

The present article concentrates on second-person in- depth phenomenological inquiry (SIPI) into human experience. In order to delineate important characteristics of SIPI we use an example of a phenomenological case study. The study comprised of descriptive experience sampling, writing of diary, and a series of elicitation interviews.

Abstract: Addressing the methodological issues raised by the commentators, I argue that the disagreement among them regarding the optimal method to gather phenomenal data (micro-phenomenology or descriptive experience sampling) points to the constructive nature of consciousness. Then, I discuss the idea of naturalistic cognitive science (i.e., cognitive science that is relatively free of laboratory constraints. I conclude that if we are to engage in naturalistic first-person research, we must embrace methodological pluralism in order to (a) contend with the constructive nature of consciousness; and (b) account for demand characteristics.

In the study of consciousness, neurophenomenology was originally established as a novel research program attempting to reconcile two apparently irreconcilable methodologies in psychology: qualitative and quantitative methods. Its potential relies on Francisco Varela’s idea of reciprocal constraints, in which first-person accounts and neurophysiological data mutually inform each other. However, since its first conceptualization, neurophenomenology has encountered methodological problems. These problems have emerged mainly because of the difficulty of obtaining and analyzing subjective reports in a systematic manner. However, more recently, several interview techniques for describing subjective accounts have been developed, collectively known as “second-person methods.” Second-person methods refer to interview techniques that solicit both verbal and non-verbal information from participants in order to obtain systematic and detailed subjective reports. Here, we examine the potential for employing second-person methodologies in the neurophenomenological study of consciousness and we propose three practical ideas for developing a second-person neurophenomenological method. Thus, we first describe second-person methodologies available in the literature for analyzing subjective reports, identifying specific constraints on the status of the first-, second- and third- person methods. Second, we analyze two experimental studies that explicitly incorporate second-person methods for traversing the “gap” between phenomenology and neuroscience. Third, we analyze the challenges that second-person accounts face in establishing an objective methodology for comparing results across different participants and interviewers: this is the “validation” problem. Finally, we synthesize the common aspects of the interview methods described above. In conclusion, our arguments emphasize that second-person methods represent a powerful approach for closing the gap between the experiential and the neurobiological levels of description in the study of human consciousness.

Key words: neurophenomenolgy, second-person methods, elicitation interview, descriptive experience sampling, double-blind interview, mutual circulation

Context: The enactive approach to cognition affirms the relevance of the study of lived experience within cognitive science. Problem: Taking experience as the phenomenon of investigation, while at the same time recognizing it as a necessary medium of any scientific activity implies theoretical, epistemological, and methodological challenges that have to be addressed in order to undertake the scientific study of experience. At the same time, it calls for a development of an alternative, non-objectivist and non-representationalist framework for and by addressing those challenges. Method: After presenting the development of the idea of cognition as enaction and pointing to its consequences for the understanding of science, we situate the study of experience within the enactive approach, presenting neurophenomenology as the methodological implementation of the enactive framework that motivated the development of first-person methods. We distinguish the micro-phenomenological interview and descriptive experience sampling as examples of such methods, reviewing their distinctive features. Results: Understanding first-person research against the background of the enactive approach is shown to be crucial for bringing about the radical epistemological shift that an enactive position entails. Implications: The examination of the relationship between first-person research and enaction makes it possible to clarify the ground from which to address the specific challenges that arise in studying lived experience. Investigating these challenges is necessary for developing a coherent research program for the enactive scientific study of experience.

Key words: Consciousness studies, descriptive experience sampling, enaction, first-person methods, lived experience, micro-phenomenological interview, radical neurophenomenology, reflexivity