Navigating the Stream of Consciousness
Research in Daydreaming and Related Inner Experience
JEROME L. SINGER Yale University
The first fact for us, then, as psychologists, is that thinking of some sort goes on. . . .
It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were nat thought or this thought or that thought,
but my thought, every thought being owned. .. .
The eloquence of William James raises what is for
psychology, even now, a fundamental dilemma in
establishing its subject matter and theoretical
thrust. Since the turn of the century, psycholo-
gists have made strong advances in technology and
experimental method. We have been especially
successful in gaining mastery over the responses of
a number of small animal species whose bar-
pressing patterns we can modulate with virtuoso
skill. But what happens when we attempt to pre-
sent these important findings to the thousands and
thousands of undergraduates who flock, forever
hopeful and curious, into elementary psychology
courses throughout the land? We describe the
results of conditioned eyelid experiments or verbal
paired-associate learning, or we demonstrate for
them that rats and pigeons can be put on schedules
to learn Ping-Pong or to salute the American flag.
The students seem to turn from us at this point
and rush off to read Laing, Jung, Rollo May, or
Maslow or to follow more exotic directions ranging
from the seeming profundities of sorcerers like Don
Juan to the teachings of Sufi, Yoga, and Zen.
However impressive our achievements in objectify-
ing human behavior may be, the students experi-
ence within themselves a sense that their own
private fantasies, daydreams, night dreams, and
all of the yearnings and doubts and confusions that
torment them are somehow not being touched or
examined in any systematic way by psychologists.
This article was given as the presidential address at the
meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Phila-
delphia, April J974.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Jerome L. Singer,
Department of Psychology, Kirtland Hall, Yale University,
New Haven, Connecticut 06520.
William James, 1890/1950, pp. 224, 225
They experience, as James long ago noted, a cer-
tain me-ness that has a special and exciting quality
and about which they would like to learn more.
Often enough, they hear nothing at all about
private fantasy in the one scientific discipline they
assume, would be most relevant for researching this
facet of their lives. The thrill of recognition we
all experience when we read the literary interior
monologues of great writers such as James Joyce,
William Faulkner, or Saul Bellow should remind
us that ongoing private events are a vital part of
psychology, however difficult they may be to study
systematically.
Just as the first half of the century witnessed the
great advances toward making psychology a science
by examining overt behaviors and largely denying
the significance of private events, I believe we are
well launched in the second half of this century
toward exploring private experience. The cognitive
revolution (Dember, 1974) was pioneered by theo-
reticians like Hebb (1960), Miller, Galanter, and
Pribram (1960), Tomkins (1962), and Heider
(1958) in their several fields. Even committed
researchers in Pavlovian conditioning have been
increasingly forced to emphasize the central con-
structs involving imagery in developing new models
of response acquisition (Beritoff, 196S). The
older models of stimulus and response at the
peripheral level, of hydraulic energy systems, or
of hunger, thirst, or sex drives pressing for dis-
charge are being replaced by views of man as an
information-processing creature, an image maker
who steers his way through a complex and tricky
physical and social environment. Following Tom-
kins (1962), I would propose that the range of
our emotions—surprise, interest, fear, terror, anger,
depression, joy, and laughter—depends to a great
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • JULY 1975 • 727
degree upon how well we can match each novel
social or physical environment to our already es-
tablished sets of expectations or plans or to the
hierarchy of what Klinger (1971) has called "cur-
rent concerns." The theoretical and heuristic
power of notions of central matching (Neisser,
1967), imagery (Paivio, 1971; Segal, 1971;
Sheehan, 1972), or broader ranging ideologies
(Dember, 1974; Tomkins, 1962) all point the way
toward much more extensive exploration of the
ongoing stream of consciousness in human experi-
ence. The presentation that follows describes a
series of interconnected research approaches that
deal with ongoing thought experience and with the
relevant functions, personality characteristics, and
cognitive implications of these "inner" phenomena.
Hopefully, this review can point the way toward
some intriguing questions for investigation.
A Tentative Conceptual Model
A problem one faces in attempting to study the
stream of consciousness is the unsatisfactory nature
of our imagery in this area. When I began work-
ing with daydreams (Singer, 1955) I started from
a decidedly psychoanalytic point of view, much
influenced by Freud's seventh chapter in the In-
terpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900/1962) and
the integration and updating of the theory pro-
vided by Rapaport (1960). But the metaphor of
a relatively closed energy system with a seething
cauldron of instincts pressing against a dike of ego
defenses permitting occasional leakage in the form
of daydreams or night dreams to burble to the
surface of consciousness simply did not make sense
either phenomenologically or in relation to the
available experimental data. Nor am I satisfied
with the nautical metaphor that I have used for
the title of this presentation. James decided upon
the word "stream" because he wished to emphasize
the element of seeming continuity of thought, re-
calling Heraclitus's famous image that one never
steps twice in the same place in a flowing stream.
My inclination is toward a complex processing
system involving ever-reverberating content from
long-term storage and almost continuous process-
ing of input material from our physical and social
environment. Our life task involves an endless
effort (see Kahneman, 1973) at organizing ex-
periences and matching them to available schema.
This processing is linked closely to emotional
arousal in the sense that the rate of novel input
and the persistence of unassimilable material lead
728 • JULY 1975 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
to differential affective responses as proposed by
Tomkins (1962) and Izard (1971).
Even when we talk of storage of memories, our
metaphor, drawn from computers, is imprecise.
I suspect that the way material is retained by the
brain is through a much more active and continuous
process, so that the ongoing memory activity of the
brain represents a source of stimulation competing
with the new material we have to process through
our sense organs in the waking state. The task
is made somewhat easier for us by the fact that we
have a whole set of well-established programs and
hierarchies of expectations that are sufficiently
overlearned to permit certain materials to be fil-
tered extremely rapidly. In addition, our physical
environment and, to a lesser extent, our social one
are extremely redundant. This allows a certain
amount of channel space left over to attend to the
continuing activities of our long-term storage sys-
tem and to process those memories again, primarily
in relation to the major hierarchies of plans and
programs we have already developed. While we
are wide awake we are perforce involved in quite
active processing of much input via our various
sensory modalities, and we are left relatively little
channel space for attending to private fantasies
and the continuous activity of the long-term mem-
ory system. During the night when we reduce
external stimulation to a minimum and cut down
overt movement, we are made far more aware of
the continuous internal activity of the brain in its
storage function. While particular parts of the
nocturnal cycle seem to be especially associated
with vivid dreaming, careful studies of reports
made throughout the night provide indications of
considerable thought content occurring at all stages
of sleep.
The seeming reality and vividness of the night
dream may be largely a consequence of the fact
that it emerges as a figure upon a ground of mini-
mal external input. By contrast, our daydreams
seem pale for the most part, but this is chiefly be-
cause we are already engaged in using the same
sensory channels to process visual, auditory, and
olfactory material. In addition, there is probably
an attribution process at work, for we have already
learned to label night dreams as special experi-
ences. Daydreams we often neglect completely,
and we do not have a very elaborate labeling
method for them. We therefore are inclined to
be less aware of how much daydreaming we are
actually doing all the time, simply because we do
not ticket this kind of material for later recall as
 we do night dreams. The various experiments report to estimate ongoing private experiences
carried out by Antrobus and Singer with different limits our ability to answer this question; we need
collaborators have made it clear just how much to keep the issue in mind in planning research on
extraneous thought does get reported, once sys- the stream of thought.
tematic inquiry is initiated (Antrobus, Singer,
Goldstein, & Fortgang, 1970). I think I can Psychometric Studies oj
confidently predict that anyone reading this article
Individual Differences
will at some point drift away, hopefully only
momentarily, to thoughts of forthcoming rendez- We can ask first of all: Does everybody daydream?
vous, anticipated dinners, delightful summer vaca- What are the different patterns and styles of day-
tions, or clever bits of revenge on political op- dreaming, if any? What are some of the back-
ponents in their psychology departments. ground factors that may lead to differential styles
Suppose we assume that a person has a primary or reports of frequency of daydreaming? To what
task that requires some output of a verbal or motor extent are the reports that people make about the
response, such as answering a direct question, style or frequency of their daydreaming related
signaling the presence or absence of some event in to other observable behaviors that can lend cre-
the environment, or steering an automobile through dence to the self-report mechanism as a form of
traffic. He or she must process a host of sensory inquiry in this area?
experiences that follow fairly specific visual, audi- One approach to answering some of these ques-
tory, or kinesthetic pathways (Antrobus et al., tions has been a seemingly simpleminded one of
1970; Atwood, 1971). One may already have asking people about the frequency and content of
anticipated some of these inputs and may be pre- daydreaming and related thought processes by
paring a match from long-term memory for them. means of a series of structured interviews and by
But the long-term memory system is at the same the development of questionnaires involving differ-
time producing other responses which, to some ent scales to tap different types of content and
extent, are likely to compete on the same modality- structural characteristics of daydreaming (Singer,
specific pathways. Indeed, the system can become 1966; Singer & Antrobus, 1963, 1972). One is
overloaded. Then one either fails to process im- led by this method into some highly technical
portant external signals with often embarrassing psychometric issues involving the devising of rea-
or dangerous results, for example, not hearing what sonably internally consistent but differentiated
your wife just said to you or driving through a scales of daydreaming. Some of this work has
red light. Under the pressure of an extremely evolved into a research tool we have called the
demanding and complex external situation such as Imaginal Processes Inventory (Singer & Antrobus,
climbing up a rocky ledge or driving on a busy 1972) which is made up of more than 20 scales of
highway, one is less likely to be aware of private 12 items each, representing different aspects of
thoughts. All concentration under such circum- daydreaming. For example, we have scales for
stances seems to be on the processing of the ex- frequency of daydreaming, positive reactions in
ternally derived material, daydreams, acceptance of one's daydreams, fear
A stream of thought involves a continuous set of of failure in daydreams, sexual daydreams, hostile-
plans and anticipations and a variety of unfinished aggressive daydreams, guilty daydreams, visual
businesses which compete for our limited atten- imagery in daydreams, distractibility associated
tional capacities with the demands of steering our- with daydreams, and so on.
selves through a physical and social world. There When these scales are studied, either alone or
are, moreover, interesting individual differences in in conjunction with personality inventories or other
reports people make about frequency and patterns measures, through factor analysis we can generally
of daydreaming. It remains to be seen whether identify three rather distinct factors. An example
such differences are the result of actual variations of the factors emerged in a study of 579 college
in quantity of material coming from the outside freshmen, male and female, from a private uni-
or from the long-term memory system or whether, versity in the Northeast and a border-state public
as I am more inclined to believe, they represent university in the Southeast with a rather different
different styles of attention to these ongoing pro- kind of student body (Segal & Singer, Note 1).
cesses and different values and labels assigned to These factors suggest three styles of ongoing day-
private events. Our dependence upon a verbal dreaming activity. Subjects who score high on

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • JULY 197S • 729

Factor 1 seem to be persons given to a great deal used as an operational definition of daydreaming
of tortured self-examination, driven toward achieve-
the report of thoughts that involve a shift of at-
ment and heroic accomplishment, and characterized tention away from an immediately demanding task.
by a generally negatively toned fantasy life. Sub-One approach to "validation" has been to relate
jects who score high on the second factor may be these self-ratings of presumably long-standing pat-
characterized as extremely anxious, self-doubting,terns of daydreaming to observed reports of task-
irrelevant thought during a signal-detection task.
fearful individuals, disorganized in thought, lack-
ing any clear and elaborate daydreams except thoseData from one such study (Antrobus, Coleman, &
Singer, 1967) suggest that persons who report
that are oriented around possible failure fantasies
and very little oriented toward achievement and frequent daydreaming on the questionnaires are
persistence, and primarily seeking to maximize thealso inclined to report more thoughts unrelated to
possibility of some form of external reinforcement.
the processing of the signals in an auditory tone-
These two factors seem to resemble the general detection task during the period of their watch. In
neurotic styles described by Shapiro (1965): the addition, these same subjects, while not differing
obsessional personality and the anxious, hysterical
initially from less frequent daydreamers in the
personality. The third factor seems to represent accuracy of their detections, began to report more
a generally positive orientation toward one's innertask-irrelevant thought and to miss more signals as
experience: an acceptance of it, a good deal of time went on. It is as if, almost by preference, the
interest in one's own visual and auditory imagery persons who report a good deal of daydreaming and
capacities, a high rate of thoughtfulness, and fairly
thoughtfulness eschew the monetary reward they
elaborate fantasy activity. It does not seem asso-receive for accuracy in favor of attending increas-
ciated to any degree with neurotic distress. ingly to their own private processes. A similar
In general, the trend of the studies that have result linking questionnaire measures of daydream-
accumulated both in our own research and in re- ing predisposition with the occurrence of reports
lated work with normals and patient populations of stimulus-independent thought during an audi-
suggests that daydreaming is, on the whole, a tory signal-detection task was also obtained by
widespread normal phenomenon and that particular Feldstein (1972) in working with subjects who had
patterns of daydreaming are somewhat more indi- been subjected to deprivation of rapid-eye-move-
cative of personal distress and dysphoria, but that
ment (REM) sleep.
for the most grossly disturbed patients, neurotic A somewhat different methodology was employed
and psychotic, daydreaming does not play a promi- by Fusella (1972), who adapted an intriguing
nent role in their symptomatology (Starker & method for studying the blocking effects of self-
Singer, Note 2). generated imagery which have been developed by
Of particular interest is a study by Giambra the late Sydney Segal (1971). This method is
(1974) which examines daydreaming styles across based on the old Perky phenomenon developed
a life span. Essentially, the results of his originally by a student of Titchener in the early
study indicate the same patterns of daydreaming days of introspective studies of imagery. Fusella's
described above, with indications of a linear de- subjects stared into a cone and imagined a particu-
cline with increasing age for scales relating to the
lar image at a central fixation point on an other-
guilt and negative-affect daydreams and the anx- wise homogeneous ganzfeld. Unknown to the ob-
iety pattern of daydreaming, but no decline with server, a projector flashed a picture slightly above
age being noted for the more positive-oriented day-
threshold at the very point where the subject was
dreaming factor which included using fantasies forproducing the private image. The question was
problem solving. Future-oriented daydreaming, whether the subject could detect the externally
however, did decline somewhat with age, as did produced signal while projecting his own fantasy
sexual fantasies. at the same fixation point.
Subjects had already been differentiated in terms
Some Behavioral Correlates of of their indications of positive daydreaming ten-
dencies and sensitivity on the Byrne Repression-
Daydreaming Scales Sensitization Scale. The subjects also rated the
Do self-reports of daydreaming obtained from vividness of their own images as they produced
questionnaires or interviews bear any relation to them. It was found that the more vivid the sub-
other aspects of behavior? In general, we have jects rated their own imagery, the less likely they

730 • JULY 1975 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST

 were to detect the occurrence of an external signal,
even though it was easily demonstrated that they
could detect the signal during ordinary discrimina-
tion trials. Most relevant for our purposes here
was the fact that the subjects who were high in
inner attentiveness on the questionnaire scales were
also the ones who reported themselves most likely
to project vivid images and who actually missed
the occurrence of the external signals while pro-
jecting these images. In effect then, these data
suggest that persons who report a good deal of
daydreaming on questionnaire scales are willing to
sacrifice some accuracy in attentiveness to the
external world in order to attend to their own
private fantasy material.
Meskin and Singer (1974), employing the same
subjects as Fusella, conducted a study of ocular
shifting during reflective thought in the course of
an interview. Those persons who reported them-
selves as having higher scores on positive-vivid
daydreaming scales were much more likely to shift
their eyes to the left when processing extended-
search materials. Persons low in inner attentive-
ness were more likely to shift their eyes to the
right when initiating the processing of reflective
material. These groups also differed in the degree
of elaboration they provided in response to a series
of questions that required a search of memory or
the production of fantasies.
A study just completed by Rodin and Singer
(Note 3) has also examined eye-shift patterns
comparing normal-weight and overweight subjects.
The theory of obesity involved, which is based on
the views of Schachter and Rodin (1974) as elabo-
rated in more recent research by Rodin (1973),
emphasizes the dominant role of stimulus avail-
ability and external field cues in stimulating eating
behavior for obese persons. In this study, which
also involved a face-to-face interview situation and
will be described in somewhat more detail later,
the obese college students showed significantly
lower scores on scales derived from the positive-
vivid daydreaming factor in the Imaginal Processes
Inventory. The difference was especially marked
for the scale of visual images in daydreaming.
When these same subjects were observed during
their responses to reflective questions, it was found
that the overweight subjects more often shifted
their eyes to the right when beginning to process
a reflective question while the normal-weight sub-
jects tended more often to shift their eyes left.
These results were particularly marked in relation
to the type of content, so that the normal-weight
subjects shifted eyes to the left much more often
when processing questions involving visual and
spatial imagery, while the overweight subjects
shifted gaze to the right much more often when
processing questions involving verbal or arithmetic
materials. The apparent practice effect of day-
dreaming in visual imagery was also suggested by
an intriguing finding in the study. During the
face-to-face interview, the overweight subjects (de-
spite instructions to the contrary) shut their eyes
in order to process reflective thought questions,
and particularly visual imagery questions, three
times as often as did the normal-weight subjects.
Other indications of the correlates of self-report
scales may be mentioned briefly. A series of
studies by Starker (1974a, 1974b) indicated that
subjects scoring high on the various daydreaming
factors described above and replicated in his own
factor analysis (Starker, 1971) also showed corre-
sponding content and structural differences in the
night dream material they reported, based on a log
they kept over a 2-week time period. There was,
in general, a considerable correspondence between
the self-report material on the questionnaires and
ratings made by judges of the bizarreness, degree
of emotionality, evidence of positive emotionality,
and fragmentation of dream content which was ob-
served in the dream reports of the subjects. Starker
also found evidence that production of vivid imag-
.ery on an experimental test was indeed associated
with the self-report of visual imagery in daydream-
ing based on the Imaginal Processes Inventory.
A particularly promising method of approach to
content analysis of ongoing fantasy procedures is
being developed by Isaacs (1975). After essen-
tially replicating the same three factors described
above, Isaacs has prepared a computer dictionary
of language usage based on reports of task-irrele-
vant and task-relevant thought carried out by sub-
jects during an information-processing task. Ap-
plying computer analysis to the content of these
reports of task-relevant and task-irrelevant thought,
Isaacs has examined the difference between subjects
who present extremes on some of the factors de-
rived from th£ Imaginal Processes Inventory. This
provides a method for (a) "teasing out" much
more precisely the actual quality of language that
may characterize persons who report themselves to
be differing in their styles of daydreaming and (b)
relating this material to more or less continuous
ideational activity while engaged in specific task
behavior. One finding that has come out quite
strikingly is that persons who score high on the
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • JULY 1975 • 731
positive-vivid daydreaming factor are much more
likely to introduce analogic or metaphoric language
into their reports of task-irrelevant thought content
while engaged in signal-detection activities.
The relation of the questionnaire data to special
kinds of conditions may also be mentioned. Beit-
Hallahmi (1972) found that prisoners with longer
terms of confinement showed significantly more
self-destructive, sadistic, and escape fantasies on
a version of the daydream questionnaire. Hariton
and Singer (1974) obtained responses to the day-
dream questionnaire and also interviewed a sample
of suburban housewives on the general range of
their fantasy activities as well as the possible oc-
currence of erotic fantasies during sexual inter-
course with their husbands. In this study, 65%
of the subjects reported a moderately high degree
of daydreaming taking place while actually en-
gaged in the act of coitus. The data suggested
that persons who reported a good deal of the more
positive daydreaming tendencies also daydreamed
during sexual relations, but that this pattern was
primarily a habitual one and had little relation to
their satisfaction or lack of satisfaction with either
the act itself or with their partner. In other words,
women who daydreamed a lot and enjoyed'it also
daydreamed during the sexual act. There was still
another pattern, however, which suggested that
women brought up in a more conventional and
conservative fashion were likely to use daydreams
of being forced to submit or of being raped in order
to develop their sexual arousal during intercourse
with their husbands. These women reported little
dissatisfaction in their marriage and indicated
rather that they had developed these fantasy-arous-
ing patterns early, in association with adolescent
sexual fantasies.
A study by Campagna (1975) examined mastur-
bation fantasies in male college freshmen. His
data suggest that such fantasies fall into four cate-
gories: a rather normal pattern of thoughts about
girls in one's immediate experience; a pattern of
thoughts about rather more fantastic occurrences
such as being a sheik with a large harem available
or a movie producer surrounded by willing starlets;
a third class of fantasies suggesting a kind of face-
less or dehumanized sexual experience (with indi-
cations that it may be related to feelings of guilt
or inhibition); and finally, a fourth class of fantasy
which involves a whole range of deviant sexual
behaviors and sadistic or masochistic inclinations.
To sum up this section, it seems likely that the
use of questionnaires can provide us with a good
732 • JULY 1975 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
initial look at styles and patterns of daydreaming
and that self-awareness and self-reports do indeed
seem to have some more general validity. I would
suggest, however, that we are really at the begin-
ning of exploring the many potential personality
correlates of this self-report method.
Experimental Studies of
Ongoing Thought
The obvious limitation of questionnaire approaches
is that they ask people to report retrospectively on
long-standing patterns of mentation. It seems
worth approaching the problem of the stream of
thought more directly, by examining behavior dur-
ing fairly controlled conditions in which we can
literally "tap in" systematically on the production
of stimulus-independent mentation by individuals
engaged in some type of controlled task. Here we
can ask questions such as: What relation does
awareness of daydreaming have to the accuracy of
processing external signals? To what extent does
daydreaming compete actively with external pro-
cessing, or is there the possibility that processing
can be carried out in a parallel rather than se-
quential pattern? How persistent is daydreaming
or stimulus-independent mentation in the face of
the demands made by tasks of differing complexity,
information load, or irregularity of tempo? The
methods most extensively used (Antrobus et al.,
1970; Antrobus, Greenberg, & Singer, 1966;
Antrobus & Singer, 1964) have all adopted a signal-
detection format in which one can control the
subject's focus of attention. By systematically
interrupting and obtaining either "yes-no" reports
of the occurrence of task-irrelevant thought or ob-
taining thought content reports, it becomes possible
to ascertain the degree to which such diversions of
attention (away from signal processing toward
other material drawn from long-term memory) are
a function of a variety of parameters such as speed
or complexity of signal presentation, information
load (Antrobus, 1968), degree of incentive for ac-
curacy, etc.
In general, the results of this series of studies
suggest that daydreaming may serve a modest
arousing function, keeping subjects awake by its
varied content under long and monotonous signal-
detection conditions (Antrobus & Singer, 1964).
There is, nevertheless, evidence that such varied
internal content has its price in somewhat lower
detection of signals if indeed there are additional
ways of keeping the subject aroused. In addition,
there are indications that it is difficult to drastically
reduce the occurrence of stimulus-independent
thought, despite increases in rate in complexity of
signal presentation, increased penalties for error,
and information load increases (Antrobus, 1968;
Antrobus, Singer, & Greenberg, 1966). Only ex-
treme irregularity in presentation of signals can
dramatically cut down reports of the occurrence of
task-irrelevant thought (Drucker, 1969). Studies
using this general format also give indications of
the conditions under which both sequential and par-
allel processing of stimulus-independent mentation
can be detected (Antrobus et al., 1970), of the mo-
dality-specific pathways which process visual or
auditory material from the external environment
or from long-term memory, and of a host of re-
lated problems close to current central issues in
the psychology of cognition. Indeed, it seems to
me that much current work on cognition has failed
to take into account the extensive nature of private
rehearsal and of other extraneous material which
comes to one's focal attention while engaged in a
variety of tasks such as learning abstract or con-
crete word pairs.
In addition to studying the amount of stimulus-
independent thought produced under these fairly
controlled conditions, we can also examine the re-
lation of the content of such thought to other ex-
periences of the subject. For example, Wheeler
(1969) found that those subjects whose stimulus-
independent thought activity during the signal-
detection tasks was characterized by a good deal
of positive emotional content were also likely to es-
timate the time they had spent in the booth as hav-
ing passed much more quickly. An unpublished
study by Auster, Singer, and Antrobus (Note 4)
also found that subjects whose content reports indi-
cated much more positive emotionality and fantasy
content were also more willing to sit quietly for
long periods of time in a darkened booth without
the need for external stimulation. In other words,
their private fantasy content was sufficiently in-
teresting and likely to provide a novel-enough en-
vironment, so that they did not require some type
of external structure to spend a long period of time
in this sensory-deprived setting.
The possibility of continuous sampling of thought
processes is just opening up as a method, I believe.
One of the intriguing questions one might raise is:
Just v/hat is the function of such thoughts? Do
they have any definite patterning or are they sim-
ply a response to the noise in the system, the on-
going brain processes that I have suggested? Re-
cently Antrobus and Fein (in press) have found
that the likelihood of a report of stimulus-indepen-
dent thought during signal-detection task perform-
ances can be linked to a Poisson distribution.
While there may be initial periods of up to 8 sec-
onds in which some subjects report no imagery,
once such stimulus-independent thoughts begin,
they reoccur at a constant rate.
There seems reason to believe that overlaid upon
this baseline of ongoing processing are the subjects'
hierarchies of expectations and their unfinished
business. Klinger (1971, 1974a) has elaborated ex-
tensively on the notion of current concerns, and
Horowitz (1970) has emphasized the dynamic na-
ture of intrusive thought. Antrobus, Singer, and
Greenberg (1966) have found that subjects over-
hearing a news report about a serious escalation
of the Vietnam War prior to entering the signal-
detection booth showed a considerable increase in
reports of stimulus-independent thought, with the
content of such thought relating to fantasies about
implications of this bad news. Horowitz and Bec-
ker (1971) and Becker, Horowitz, and Campbell
i(1973) found that in a fairly complex experiment
the most powerful effect on intrusive thought dur-
ing a signal-detection task was produced by expo-
sure to a stressful film, in this case the notorious
Subincision, prior to entering the detection booth.
When using a very clearly defined task such as
signal detection, the advantages of the interruption
technique are considerable and permit us to eval-
uate factors such as the relation of processing of
external stimuli to the varieties of internally gen-
erated materials. Still, there is some artificiality
to this situation, and it seems worth consider-
ing other approaches that flow more naturally
out of normal human behaviors. I think that
driving-simulation tasks or interruption during
actual driving or performance of other ordinary
kinds of work might be even more interesting for
tapping into the function of task-irrelevant thought.
Klinger (1974b) has been experimenting with a
variety of thought-sampling methods. One of these
methods, thinking out loud, requires the subject
to verbalize continuously for a period of anywhere
from 5 to 30 minutes. This method is similar to
one employed by Antrobus and Singer (1964) dur-
ing a vigilance experiment. Klinger, by using
shorter periods, is in a somewhat better position to
analyze the ongoing flow of content. As time goes
on, we can probably develop computer scoring
methods such as that being worked on by Isaacs,
which could begin to organize the structural charac-
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • JULY 1975 • 733
teristics of the flow of content. Of interest, how-
ever, is the fact that very little of the material thus
verbalized is tightly organized and logical in the
way that is implied by frequent references to dis-
tinctions between primary- and secondary-process
thinking or between directed or undirected thought.
There is considerable deviation from the main-
stream of a sequence; intrusions are made by mem-
ories, anticipations of future events, recollections
of frightening events, and so on. Under most of
these circumstances one does not get very elaborate
daydreams in the traditional sense of the term,
that is, "castles in Spain," or elaborate fantasy,
but this is quite possibly a function of the social
nature of the interaction and could be modified as
one went on for longer periods of time in this pat-
tern. Rychlak (1973) has been experimenting
with free imagery association by high school stu-
dents during half-hour sessions. He has obtained
much vivid material with strong indications that
more emotionally stable youngsters produce signi-
ficantly more positively oriented imagery and more
fantasies about future events than do the mildly
abnormal students.
An important new area for investigation concerns
extended sampling of ongoing thought in subjects
over an entire day. I think this issue merits par-
ticular attention and suggests the possibility of
some very interesting research in relation to night
dreaming as well. Hartmann (1973) proposed the
hypothesis that the so-called REM (Stage 1, EEC)
sleep at night has an important function in re-
storing the catecholaminergic balance in the brain
neurochemistry, which has been presumably de-
pleted to a great extent by the extended mental
activity that characterizes the waking state. Hart-
mann has argued that REM periods of the sleep
cycle are necessary stages through which everyone
must pass in order to build up again the cycling of
the subtle chemical compounds. He points o.ut
that the typical night dream, which is especially
associated with REM sleep, is primarily lacking
in directiveness, realistic feedback, and other char-
acteristics of secondary-process thinking, or the
kinds of processes that characterize waking beha-
vior. I mention this night-dream research because
what seems to be missing in this view is the possi-
bility that deiytime mentation is by no means as
organized and structured as Hartmann and most
other dream researchers seem to believe. Clearly
we need extensive samplings of ongoing daytime
thought before we can be so certain that thought
content through the night has unique properties in
734 • JULY 1975 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
relation to waking mentation. Kripke and Son-
neschein (1973) have monitored subjects through-
out the day and have noted evidence of a daytime
90-minute cycle that has characteristics similar to
the nighttime cycle of electroencephalographic
activity. Indeed, they report that interruptions
made regularly during the day suggest that day-
dreamlike mentation is particularly at a peak about
every 90 minutes and is associated with heightened
alpha and reduced eye movement. Here is an area
that clearly beckons for further exploration.
It is possible that a certain amount of the nature
of ongoing thought is part of a continuous plan-
ning and anticipating process. Even the seemingly
random or aimless intrusions that occur while we
are primarily thinking about urgent business often
do have relevance to other activities we must even-
tually engage in. Or they may reflect our sudden
recall of unfinished business and urgent tasks. As
somebody who tends to take on too many different
kinds of responsibilities, I occasionally reach a
point at which the thoughts of various unfinished
tasks before me for any given day or week pile up
upon each other in my mind to the point that I
experience an almost agonizing pain. I suggest
that we need to examine processes of this kind
and the degree to which certain types of emotional
disturbances or flights into escapist behaviors rang-
ing from taking drugs to watching television may
reflect the painfulness of having to be continuously
aware of the variety of unfinished businesses in
one's life which cannot be acted upon relatively
quickly. Indeed, it might be a useful experiment
to see if subjects would volunteer to participate in
subjecting themselves to massive doses of the Zei-
garnik effect so that we could determine whether
such accumulated unfinished business leads to ex-
periences of pain, mild symptomatology, and a
variety of escapist behaviors designed to cut out
thinking as much as possible.
Daydreaming and Reflective Thought
in a Social Situation
How can we tell in an ordinary social situation
if someone with whom we are conversing is pay-
ing attention to us or is lost in a fantasy or remi-
niscence unrelated to the conversation? Sometimes
we seem to detect a fixed stare off into the distance
or a faded ghost of a smile. What are the indica-
tions in overt physical response or in autonomic
functioning which suggest that someone is process-
ing vivid visual or auditory imagery or elabora-
ting privately on material drawn from long-term
storage? A series of experimental studies in our
own and other laboratories indicates that the.pro-
duction of such internal material in the waking
state with eyes open is generally associated with
reduced eye movement (Antrobus, Antrobus, &
Singer, 1964; Klinger, Gregoire, & Barta, 1973;
Marks, 1972; Singer & Antrobus, 1965; Singer,
Greenberg, & Antrobus, 1971). These findings sug-
gest that it may be necessary to fix the eyes on a
bland stimulus or permit them to go "out of focus"
in order to reduce processing of externally derived
stimulation and to leave channel space for intern-
ally generated imagery. Such results were ob-
tained, generally, in situations in which a subject
was alone and the physical visual environment was
controlled systematically. What about the more
common situation of a social dyad, however? The
extensive literature in social psychology on eye
contact has largely focused upon the characteristics
of the interaction and has ignored the possible re-
lation of eye shift or focus to what is going on
"inside" the participants' heads.
From the cognitive point of view, it may be
necessary for a person to shift his gaze from the
face of another person in order to clear channel
space for complex inner processing, a review of
past events, future fantasies, or perhaps thoughts
of escape from the boring conversation of his part-
ner. If the face of another person is perhaps the
most significant stimulus in our environment, the
main communicator of emotional information
(Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1971; Izard, 1971;
Tomkins, 1962), then it should be difficult indeed
to engage in extended reflection without shifting
one's eyes to a blank wall or neutral stimulus.
This is indeed what emerged among other findings
in a recent study by Meskin and Singer (1974),
in which subjects engaged in extended searches of
memory or fantasy thought while face to face with
an interviewer.
The situation of the relation of eye shift to
processing visual or verbal materials is more com-
plicated than we thought initially, however. In
the past 5 years there have been indications of the
relative importance of the differential specialization
of function of the left and right hemispheres of the
brain for processing different types of cognitive
material. The convergence of clinical observations
by Day (1967), split-brain experiments (Bogen,
1969; Gazzaniga, 1967), perceptual studies (Kins-,
bourne, 1973), and personality research (Bakan,
1969; Hamad, 1972) points to the possibility that
eye shifts during reflective thought may represent
(a) the particular content, visual-spatial or ver-
bal-quantitive, or (b) the habitual processing style
of the individual. Because the eyes are related
neuroanatomically to the contralateral side of the
brain, shifting the eyes to the right should be re-
lated to verbal or quantitative processing, or logi-
cal or analytical thought, while shifting the eyes
to the left should reflect visual-spatial, emo-
tional, and fantasy processing, or differential hemis-
pheric function (Bakan, 1969; Bogen, 1969; Gaz-
zaniga, 1967). And, indeed, in the study by Mes-
kin and Singer (1974) it was shown that those
subjects who shifted their eyes predominantly to
the left during reflection gave more visually ori-
ented responses and reported themselves as high
daydreamers, while subjects shifting their eyes
to the right gave more verbal cliche answers and
scored lower on the scales of daydreaming.
More recently, a study by Rodin and Singer
(Note 3) has attempted to put together the dif-
ferent models of eye shift during reflective thought
in a single, rather complicated experiment. Sub-
jects were either overweight or of normal weight.
The obesity literature suggests the strong demand
character of external stimulation for fat persons
(Rodin & Slochower, 1974), so that they should
as a group find it even more difficult to shift gaze
from the face of another person to process complex
material. In addition, Rodin (1973) suggested
that the thought style of obese persons may differ
markedly from normals. The experiment also in-
cluded presenting subjects with questions involving
minimal memory search, and visual or verbal—
quantitative extended-search questions designed to
produce complex private processing. Finally, the ex-
periment was carried out to test even further the
possible control of direction of shift by face con-
tact. Throughout the experiment another person sat
next to the interviewer either to the left or to the
right of the subject so as to force shifting to the
"blank" area of the room if possible. A condition
without a confederate was also employed.
The results of the study are quite complex but
provocative. As indicated above, the obese subjects
reported significantly less visually oriented day-
dreaming on the questionnaires. They also shifted
their eyes significantly more to the right during
questions involving verbal or quantitative content,
while the normal-weight subjects shifted their eyes
considerably more to the left for the visual and
fantasy questions posed. The obese subjects gen-
erally showed more shifting of their eyes toward
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • JULY 197S • 735
the blank space, particularly if the confederate
was seated toward their left. The data, in general,
suggest that direction of eye shift is a complicated
but reliable indicator of whether one is processing
elaborate fantasy material or verbal material and
that for most people, a shift to a neutral field is
necessary for extended review of material from
the long-term storage. Clearly well established
personal processing styles come into play as well,
with obese subjects showing much less inclination
toward visual imagery but more direct visual res-
ponse to external cues.
We seem on the threshold here of an inter-
esting series of explorations of the subtle relations
between types of content thought about—visual or
verbal, overlearned material or cliche content ver-
sus extended-search content or fantasy, abstract or
emotional—and the hemispheric functional asym-
metry of the brain and its overt manifestation,
direction of eye shift. What does it mean to say
that visual imagery or daydreams and emotional
or creative thoughts are processed in the right
hemisphere?
A Concluding Note
Space limitations prevent a review of a variety of
studies that bear on the issue of the role of fantasy
in modifying or enhancing aroused drives or emo-
tions (Biblow, 1973; Paton, 1972; Singer, 1970).
The exciting possibilities for studying the origins
of daydreaming and the stream of thought in
the make-believe play of early childhood are
only just opening up as well (Fein, 1975; Singer,
1973). The role of television or of special train-
ing in enhancing imaginative capacities of children
also beckons for further investigation (Freyberg,
1973; Gottlieb, 1973; Singer, 1971; Singer &
Singer, Notes 5 &>6).
I hope by this time I have conveyed a sense of
the range and possibilities for exploring the stream
of thought through systematic methods. I can
mention only in passing important new approaches
in the study of daydreaming or imagery as an ap-
proach to psychotherapy or in biofeedback research
(Schwartz, 1973; Singer, 1974). Such develop-
ments bode well for bringing into scientific per-
spective some of the more speculative and seem-
ingly mystical practices of the various Oriental
meditation procedures now popular on college cam-
puses as well as in psychotherapy workshops. I
believe we have the tools to tackle many of the
subtle facets of human experience labeled variously
736 • JULY 197S • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
as altered states of consciousness, transcendental
experiences, and mystical elevations. Personally,
I am inclined to feel that most of them can be
dealt with as manifestations of our basic informa-
tion-processing mechanisms. The excitement of ex-
ploring the stream of thought as a human phenom-
enon lies, for me, not so much in elucidating cosmic
mysteries as in helping us chart more clearly the
range of creative possibilities that inhere in our
day-to-day mental meanderings.
REFERENCE NOTES
1. Segal, B., & Singer, J. L. Daydream patterns, person-
ality traits and drug usage in college freshmen. Manu-
script in preparation, 1974.
2. Starker, S., & Singer, J. L. Daydreaming patterns,
presenting complaints and pathology of psychiatric male
patients. Manuscript in preparation, 1974.
3. Rodin, J., & Singer, J. L. Laterality of eye-shift, ex-
ternality and obesity. Manuscript in preparation, 1974.
4. Auster, N., Singer, J. L., & Antrobus, J. S. Tolerance
for silence and stimulus-independent mentation during
a signal detection task. Unpublished manuscript and
honors thesis, City College, City University of New
York, 1970.
5. Singer, D. G., & Singer, J. L. Fostering imaginative
play in pre-school children: Television and live model
effects. In B. Sutton-Smith (Chair), Current research
in children's play. Symposium presented at the meeting
of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans,
September 1974.
6. Singer, D. G., & Singer, J. L. Family TV viewing
habits and the spontaneous play of 4-year-olds. In R.
M. Liebert (Chair), Prosocial television: A look at the
other side. Symposium presented at the meeting of the
American Psychological Association, New Orleans, Sep-
tember 1974.
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