Structure in the stream of consciousness: Evidence from a verbalized thought protocol and automated text analytic methods.

The spontaneous stream of thought (SST), often called the stream of consciousness, exhibits a "clump-and-jump" structure: clusters of related thoughts about a topic followed by a jump to a new topic, in a repeating pattern. Multiple lines of evidence support this structure, including high interrater agreement in identifying jumps, corroboration by automated text analytic methods, identification by a data-driven algorithm, and inferred presence in unverbalized SST. Jumps involve a discontinuous shift where a new clump is only modestly related to the previous one. These results illuminate serial structure in SST and invite research into the processes generating the pattern.

Study at a glance

Abstract

A key question about the spontaneous stream of thought (SST), often called the stream of consciousness, concerns its serial structure: How are thoughts in an extended sequence related to each other? In this study, we used a verbalized thought protocol to investigate "clump-and-jump" structure in SST-clusters of related thoughts about a topic followed by a jump to a new topic, in a repeating pattern. Several lines of evidence convergently supported the presence of clump-and-jump structure: high interrater agreement in identifying jumps, corroboration of rater-assigned jumps by automated text analytic methods, identification of clumps and jumps by a data-driven algorithm, and the inferred presence of clumps and jumps in unverbalized SST. We also found evidence that jumps involve a discontinuous shift in which a new clump is only modestly related to the previous one. These results illuminate serial structure in SST and invite research into the processes that generate the clump-and-jump pattern.