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Limits on Introspection

Guido Corallo¹; Jérôme Sackur^2,3; Stanislas Dehaene^3,4,5; Mariano Sigman¹

¹ Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory, Physics Department, University of Buenos Aires · ² Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (CNRS/ENS/EHESS), Paris, France · ³ INSERM, U562, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Gif/Yvette, France · ⁴ CEA, DSV/I2BM, NeuroSpin Center, Gif/Yvette, France · ⁵ Collège de France

Which cognitive processes are accessible to conscious report? To study the limits of conscious reportability, we designed a novel method of quantified introspection, in which subjects were asked, after each trial of a standard cognitive task, to estimate the time spent completing the task. We then applied classical mental-chronometry techniques, such as the additive-factors method, to analyze these introspective estimates of response time. We demonstrate that introspective response time can be a sensitive measure, tightly correlated with objective response time in a single-task context. In a psychological-refractory-period task, however, the objective processing delay resulting from interference by a second concurrent task is totally absent from introspective estimates. These results suggest that introspective estimates of time spent on a task tightly correlate with the period of availability of central processing resources.

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02211.x

Volume

19 (11)

Pages

1110-1117

Language

en

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Sources

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