Task 3 Flashcards
(35 cards)
Introspection
Looking into one’s own mind and observing its contents –> observing your conscious experience
- it is selective –> focus on what is relevant to your purpose at the moment
- first-person data
Introspective Verbal Report (IVR)
A verbal description of your conscious experience
Doctrine of Concordance
Assumption of concordance between behavior, mental processes, and conscious experience
Why are introspective verbal reports controversial?
- consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon –> it plays no role in causing people’s behavior –> it is unimportant
- IVRs are often inaccurate and unreliable –> errors may occur in recall and reporting of conscious experiences
Analytic Introspecion
Describes conscious experiences in terms of their elementary constituents
–> structuralism
–> rarely used today
Structuralism
Conscious experience is constructed from a limited number of “elements” of sensory experience and simple feelings, and these elements can be discovered through introspection
Descriptive (Phenomenological) Introspection
Description of conscious experience in natural language terms –> most simple form
“What did I perceive/think/feel?”
–> reflective consciousness = objective
–> simply reports about mental states
Interpretative Introspection
Introspection intended to discover the causes (antecedents) of our thoughts, feelings, and actions
“Why do I feel this way?”
–> tries to explain mental states
Limitation of IVR: Forgetting
Conscious experiences may be forgotten within a matter of seconds or minutes
Multistore model of memory: you can report conscious contents if they are still available in STM or they have been transferred to LTM and can be retrieved into STM
Limitation of IVR: Reconstruction Errors
1) people report more than they actually recall by filling in memory gaps with plausible fabrications
2) the memory report may be more orderly than what was really recalled
Limitation of IVR: Verbal Description Difficulties
Some conscious experiences cannot be adequately described in words = ineffable experiences
Limitation of IVR: Distortion through Observation
Introspective Uncertainty Principle:
Attempting to introspectively observe one’s conscious contents may change the contents that are being observed
Limitation of IVR: Censorship
- subjects may be reluctant to reveal embarrassing thoughts
- subjects may give false reports
- subjects claim that they do not recall anything
Limitation of IVR: Experimental Demands
Subjects’ verbal reports may be altered if they try to produce subjective experiences that they think are of the expected type and then report those
Limitation of IVR: Lack of Independent Verification
Researchers have no way to independently check on the accuracy of subjects’ reports
Limitation of IVR: Substitution of Inferences for Observation
When people do not have direct introspective access to the stimuli or mental processes that caused their feelings or behavior, they may make plausible inferences, using whatever information is available
Methods of Obtaining Introspective Verbal Reports: Thinking out Loud
Subjects make a continuous verbal report on conscious contents while they are in a particular situation
+ detailed information, little loss due to forgetting
- flow of conscious experience might be altered or slowed
Methods of Obtaining Introspective Verbal Reports: Thought Sampling
Subjects are instructed that whenever a desired signal occurs, they are to report what they were thinking at the moment that the signal occurred
+ reports from STM
- no information about stream of consciousness
Methods of Obtaining Introspective Verbal Reports: Retrospective Reports
They are used to collect data about thoughts that occurred on a specific previous occasion in reference to a specified previous event
+ no interference with ongoing thought processes
- forgetting, reconstruction errors, substituting inferences for observations
Methods of Obtaining Introspective Verbal Reports: Event Recording
How often a subject has a particular type of thought –> each occurrence of the designated type of thought is noted
+ reports from STM, tracing changes
- knowing to report affects frequency of thought
Methods of Obtaining Introspective Verbal Reports: Diaries
Written narrative reports on one’s activities and thoughts, in which entries are made periodically over a period of several days, months, or years
+ useful information over long period, open-ended
- selective, unsystematic, forgetting, reconstruction errors
Methods of Obtaining Introspective Verbal Reports: Group Questionnaires
Get a lot of data from a lot of people as quickly and cheaply as possible
+ comparing groups of people
- forgetting, closed
What is introspection NOT?
Introspection is not…
1) … having conscious experiences
2) … a sensory process
3) … a brain scanner
4) … simply making of inferences about our mental states, based on our overt behavior
5) … direct inner observation (ongoing thinking)
What is introspection?
1) thinking about one’s primary conscious experiences -> for the purpose of describing and interpreting them
2) Introspection is retrospection: observing your remembered past conscious experiences –> retrieving information from STM and LTM
