The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Stream of Consciousness in Situations of Minimal Attentional Demands

Abstract

Humans constantly experience content in their stream of consciousness. The light never stops shining in our minds, whether we create a mental representation of part of our environment, focus on an emotion, or internally-generated content. The stream of consciousness has mostly been studied in the context of predefined tasks. Less is known about aspects of our daily life that are characterized by having little or nothing in particular to pay attention to (e.g., taking a shower, walking around, or lying lazily on the beach), situations of minimal attentional demands. Though there is theoretical interest in the relationship between mental health and the content of the stream of consciousness as well as the dynamics characterizing the rise and fall of such content occurring in such moments, there has been little empirical work investigating this relationship. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore whether the content and dynamics of the stream of consciousness occurring in situations of minimal attentional demands differ based on personality traits and mental health status. In Chapter 1, we first provide evidence of the validity of the Think Aloud paradigm as a method to quantify the content and dynamics of the stream of consciousness during a 10-minute resting state task and then demonstrate the usefulness of such metrics to predict individual differences in brooding tendencies, drawing a cognitive profile of the experience of brooders when left alone with their thoughts. Using the same paradigm, Chapter 2 further supports the usefulness of quantifying the content and dynamics of the stream of consciousness by identifying differences predictive of participants’ creative potential. Finally, Chapter 3 revealed similarity between the phenomenology of the stream of consciousness in two different low attentional demand situations, dreams and mind wandering, and explored their putative relationship with current concerns. Results from this body of work highlight the importance of studying the stream of consciousness in situations of minimal attentional demands.