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Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought
Involuntary thinking occurs when mental states arise without intention. Such thoughts can take different forms, such as involuntary autobiographical memories (IAM), ruminative thoughts, and unexpected thoughts—all of which are popular areas of study, albeit in somewhat disparate literatures. Despite...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10497430/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37000248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01814-y |
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author | Poulos, Cati Zamani, Andre Pillemer, David Leichtman, Michelle Christoff, Kalina Mills, Caitlin |
author_facet | Poulos, Cati Zamani, Andre Pillemer, David Leichtman, Michelle Christoff, Kalina Mills, Caitlin |
author_sort | Poulos, Cati |
collection | PubMed |
description | Involuntary thinking occurs when mental states arise without intention. Such thoughts can take different forms, such as involuntary autobiographical memories (IAM), ruminative thoughts, and unexpected thoughts—all of which are popular areas of study, albeit in somewhat disparate literatures. Despite these mental states sharing a common thread of feeling involuntary in nature, it is nevertheless unclear what separates them phenomenologically. We conducted a set of exploratory and confirmatory experiments to elucidate the appraisal dimensions behind these forms of involuntary thought, with a particular interest in understanding the phenomenology behind unexpected thoughts that are predicted to violate expectations of both timing and content. Across two experiments, we found that unexpected thoughts had unique appraisal structures compared to the other two forms of involuntary thought: they were less identifiably cued, more surprising in content and timing, and offered new information (i.e., insight). We discuss how these distinctions support recent theories regarding the nature of unexpected thought and its relation to other forms of involuntary thinking, namely IAM and ruminative thought, which are the more commonly studied forms of involuntary thinking. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00426-023-01814-y. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10497430 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104974302023-09-14 Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought Poulos, Cati Zamani, Andre Pillemer, David Leichtman, Michelle Christoff, Kalina Mills, Caitlin Psychol Res Research Involuntary thinking occurs when mental states arise without intention. Such thoughts can take different forms, such as involuntary autobiographical memories (IAM), ruminative thoughts, and unexpected thoughts—all of which are popular areas of study, albeit in somewhat disparate literatures. Despite these mental states sharing a common thread of feeling involuntary in nature, it is nevertheless unclear what separates them phenomenologically. We conducted a set of exploratory and confirmatory experiments to elucidate the appraisal dimensions behind these forms of involuntary thought, with a particular interest in understanding the phenomenology behind unexpected thoughts that are predicted to violate expectations of both timing and content. Across two experiments, we found that unexpected thoughts had unique appraisal structures compared to the other two forms of involuntary thought: they were less identifiably cued, more surprising in content and timing, and offered new information (i.e., insight). We discuss how these distinctions support recent theories regarding the nature of unexpected thought and its relation to other forms of involuntary thinking, namely IAM and ruminative thought, which are the more commonly studied forms of involuntary thinking. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00426-023-01814-y. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2023-03-31 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10497430/ /pubmed/37000248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01814-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Research Poulos, Cati Zamani, Andre Pillemer, David Leichtman, Michelle Christoff, Kalina Mills, Caitlin Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought |
title | Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought |
title_full | Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought |
title_fullStr | Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought |
title_full_unstemmed | Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought |
title_short | Investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought |
title_sort | investigating the appraisal structure of spontaneous thoughts: evidence for differences among unexpected thought, involuntary autobiographical memories, and ruminative thought |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10497430/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37000248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01814-y |
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