The stream of consciousness often appears whimsical and free from external control. Recent advances, however, reveal that the stream is more susceptible to external influence than previously assumed. Thoughts can be triggered by external stimuli in a manner that is involuntary, systematic, and nontrivial. Based on these advances, our experimental manipulation systematically triggered a sequence...

In the present study we examined whether higher levels of object imagery, a stable characteristic that reflects the ability and preference in generating pictorial mental images of objects, facilitate involuntary and voluntary retrieval of autobiographical memories (ABMs). Individuals with high (High-OI) and low (Low-OI) levels of object imagery were asked to perform an involuntary and a volunta...

In the present study we examined, first, whether voluntary and involuntary attention manifest differently in people who differ in impulsivity (measured with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale). For Experiment 1, we used the spatial cueing task with informative and noninformative spatial cues to probe voluntary and involuntary attention, respectively. We found that participants with high impulsivity ...

Observers reported the orientation of a tilted grating that was presented together with a vertical distractor grating. In the main experiments, target contrast was low. There was location uncertainty because target location varied randomly and differences between target and distractor were small. In contrast to a previous report (T. Liu, F. Pestilli, & M. Carrasco, 2005), our results showed tha...