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.

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.

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