A month or so ago, I received this email from Sadie Dingfelder, a person I had never met:
..........
Last year, I found out that I am faceblind, which is sort of surprising for a reporter. The Washington Post story I wrote about that experience ended up being wildly popular, and I've been asked to write a book proposal that explores current research on my other brain quirks, and reflects on how these forces may have invisibly shaped my life. In addition to face-blindness (prosopagnosia), I can't visualize anything (aphantasia), I have no inner monologue (that I'm consciously aware of), and I have a very limited memory of my own life (SDAM?). Do you have time to chat with me about the different modalities for thought?
...........
I suggested that she have a look at the Lena and Ryan interviews and asked if she might like to participate, and we agreed to post the series of interviews as they unfold.
Read her account of faceblindness and her participation in DES in her hilarious and informative book Do I Know You?
This is the first contact between Sadie and Russ Hurlburt (other than the emails scheduling this contact). Sadie has some questions for Russ about the DES procedure and his involvement in it. They agree that she will sample using the DES procedure, and she makes five predictions about what they will find. (She turns out to be pretty much right about three or four of them, and far off the mark on the fourth.)...
Because they had not, prior to this interview, agreed to the existence of videotaping, there is no audio or video until 21 minutes into the interview (there is a transcript of the first 21 minutes).
The interview is free-wheeling, but here's an approximate road map:
[7:24]: The history of DES
[10:56]: The beeper
[14:05]: Thinking in words?
[16:39]: How DES works
[20:07]: We should video this conversation
[21:45]: Do people have a dominant mode of experience
[23:57]: Why don’t people know their own experience?
Sadie collected five samples; we had time to discuss four of them. She described mostly bodily sensory awareness, but we should always be skeptical about first interviews....
In general—sampling day 1: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the first sampling interview (or the first several sampling interviews) is almost entirely iterative training. First-day sampling interviews appear to be inquiries into experience, but their fundamental aim is to facilitate discussions of how to do DES more skillfully. DES recognizes that participants on their first sampling day are not skillful, so DES routinely discards first-day descriptions.
With Sadie in particular: This was a typical DES day 1 interview: there were some reasons to be confident that Sadie was describing his experience, but substantial portions of the interview were spent discussing the skills required in DES sampling.
Sample 1.1 [2:18]: Sadie (70%) feels the muscle just below her left lower lip pulling down, a sensory experience. She does not experience herself as pulling the muscle down but rather notices the muscle pulling down. At the same time, she (15%) feels tightness in her chest in a diffuse area just below her sternum. [As best we could say, given the limitations of a day 1 sample, it seemed like the sensation was its own experience. After the beep, she associated with or named the sensation as annoyance.] Also at the same time, she (15%) experiences her head as full. [She metaphorically referred to it as "filled with cotton," but did not mean a physical sensation of cotton. Perhaps more like a mental fullness. We could not describe this aspect in much detail.]
Sample 1.2 [21:55]: [Sadie (60%) feels her tongue being squished, a sharp pressure sensation on a small portion of the back left side of her tongue. [As a matter of fact, her teeth are biting/squishing her tongue but the sensation is not really felt in her teeth and she does not experience herself as doing the biting.] At the same time, (40%) the word Thurs is present to her. There is no voice present spoken or heard but perhaps there is some speaking physicality to this experience—perhaps she is beginning to make the shape with her lips for the sound Th.
Sample 1.3 [37:13]: [Sadie is reading and, at the moment, is on the word Dogwood (part of an address)]. Most prominent (60%), the word Dogwood is present to her, not spoken or heard, but definitely present and unfolding over time, so that, at the moment of the beep, she is experiencing the Dog part of Dogwood. The inner word is in sync with her reading of Dogwood [such that, had the beep not interrupted, she would have eventually had in mind the entire word Dogwood]. At the same time, she (40%) is thinking, not in words, pictures, or other symbols, about her Dad and brother’s relationship, about how they to miscommunicate, how they can’t seem to "get" each other.
Sample 1.4 [48:11]: [Sadie is making a GIF. She is thinking of a tag/caption for the GIF but does not experience that process directly (no words present, for example).] As best we could say, if anything is present in her direct experience, it is vague and inchoate. Perhaps she has some inchoate-yet-present sense that the thinking is ongoing. Perhaps there is nothing ongoing in her direct experience. [When she arrives at an idea for the tag, it will presumably present itself to her, but, for now, there is little or nothing.]
Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sadie collected six samples. We discussed all of them including some inner speaking that does not conform to the rules of reality and a fascinating glimpse into the veridicality of inner experience descriptions....
In general—sampling day 2: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the first sampling interview (or the first several sampling interviews) is almost entirely iterative training. First-day sampling interviews appear to be inquiries into experience, but their fundamental aim is to facilitate discussions of how to do DES more skillfully. DES recognizes that participants on their first sampling day are not skillful, so DES routinely discards first-day descriptions.
With Sadie in particular: This was a typical DES day 2 interview: there were some reasons to be confident that Sadie was describing her experience, but there were places where we discovered that Sadie was mistaken about characteristics of her experience (see sample 2.6).
Sample 2.1 [0:12]: [Sadie is walking outside.] She notices a splotch of sunlight on the cement, a visual sensory awareness.
Sample 2.2 [3:23]: [Sadie is engaged in a hypothetical inner dialogue between her and her editor. Her voice (innerly) speaks for both parties and, at the moment of the beep, it’s her turn in the conversation.] She (80%) innerly says to her editor, "I’m told the mom supports it." At the same time, she (20%) wonders whether what she’s saying is true—does the mother really support it? This is a cognitive thought process not in words, pictures, or other symbols.
Sample 2.3 [13:37]: [Sadie is musing about what the DC mayor would/should say if criticized for (hypothetically) removing obesity from the list of pre-existing conditions that warrant a COVID shot.] At the moment of the beep, she innerly says in her own voice but speaking as the mayor/mayor’s representative such as press secretary (that aspect wasn’t fully specified in Sadie’s experience), "It’s just too big a group" [referring to the number of people who would qualify as obese.] The beep interrupts after the word "too" and, simultaneously in experience, Sadie barely or almost feels her lips and tongue forming the shape for the t sound in "too." This is a faint, pre-physical sensation—like a presentiment or preparation in her mouth just before the actual sound would be made.
Simultaneously, there is also a dialogue between an editor and Sadie. The mayor dialogue is definitely more prominent (90-10). Sadie was innerly saying "It’s just too big a group" both as the mayor (or representative) to Sadie, but also in some inchoate/barely present way, as her editor might say to her [even though the obesity conversation is irrelevant to her editor.]
Sample 2.4 [25:23]: Sadie somehow thinks suh, the sound made by the letter s, without innerly speaking or hearing it. Suh is the beginning of the word "some," and that is understood—the um portion has simply not occurred. It’s not that suh is entirely isolated from the word. At the same time, she experiences herself as engaged in ‘working something out,’ a cognitive experience that was no not at all specified at the moment of the beep. She doesn’t think she knew what she’s working out or why. And suh/some is not apparently related to the working-it-out process.
Sample 2.5 [31:57]: Somehow present to Sadie (80%), but not in a voice, are the unfolding-as-if-spelling letters of released, r – e – l – e – a – s – e – d. Even though there is no voice or image, Sadie definitely encounters each letter individually, not as spoken or heard. She’s also, in-sync with the inner letters, typing released into her phone and perhaps that is in experience, but perhaps it’s automatic/not in experience. At the same time, she (20%) thinks she should/might check the vaccine website and, simultaneously, what she would be checking it for (that’s not clear at the moment). This is a cognitive experience not in words, pictures, or other symbols. It definitely contains two simultaneous aspects"Maybe I should check the site and What would I be checking the site for?"even though those seem they would have to unfold in the some first-then order.
Sample 2.6 [39:47]: Sadie innerly hears the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #2. It seems to her that she’s hearing it accurately, exactly as it would sound if playing out of her stereo. At the moment of the beep, she’s at the 5th beat of the recorder solo. She’s listening somewhat intently"this isn’t "background" music.
Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sadie collected five samples. We discussed all of them. There are two noteworthy themes emerging in this sampling day: the experience of thinking without experience of the content of that thinking; and the experience of word—word—word reading....
In general—sampling day 3: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the third sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.
With Sadie in particular: Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sample 3.1 [0:44]: [Sadie is writing—typing, really—at her computer.] She (50%) apprehends herself as thinking, in some thinking/cognizing mode, yet the content is not directly present. [After the beep, she can say she was thinking about a book proposal, but those details are not specified in her experience at the moment of the beep.] At the same time, she (50%) feels and hears (all sensory) the air rush out of her nose as she exhales with mild force.
Sample 3.2 [11:25]: [Sadie is re-reading the sentence she has just typed.] She (80%) apprehends herself as thinking, [a very similar, perhaps nearly identical experience to 3.1, in that she is definitely thinking but the details of the thought are not directly present. After the fact at this beep, she can say she was trying to think of a better anecdote, but that was not in direct experience.] At the same time, she (20%) sees on her computer screen this, which the last word she typed. Her experience is only of this [not of the rest of the sentence to which it belongs].
Sample 3.3 [19:24]: [Sadie is reading and, at the moment of the beep] she reads that. [As in 3.2,] her experience at the moment of the beep is only of the word that [not of the rest of the sentence to which it belongs]. [Sadie was somewhat surprised by this as she believes herself to be a fast reader and perhaps this word—word—word experience would be inconsistent with what she expected of fast readers.]
Sample 3.4 [25:33]: [Before the beep, Sadie had been thinking of what to write. She has arrived at a solution,] and experiences that arrival/crystallization of the solution [as if, Aha, here’s what to write!], yet the details of the solution are not present.
Sample 3.5 [33:39]: Sadie’s tongue feels pressure [as it presses against her top two teeth], a straightforward sensory awareness. [After the fact, Sadie infers that she was thinking of something that began with the letter s—and thus, apparently her mouth was forming the sound for s—but that thinking was not at all present at the moment of the beep (contrast with 3.1 and 3.2).]
Sadie collected six samples. We discussed all of them. The two themes noted in day 3 continued to emerge but with refinement or modification: the experience of thinking without experiencing the content of that thinking now includes possibly the experience of nothing that is later known to be thinking; and the experience of individual letters (partial words), even more fragmentary than the word—word—word reading described on day 3....
In general—sampling day 4: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the fourth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.
With Sadie in particular: Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sample 4.1 [0:07]: [Sadie is at her computer writing.] She is (60%) thinking, a vague/inchoate process with no content directly present (e.g., possibilities of what she might write). Perhaps this would be better described as having a blank mind, which on retrospection was known to be thinking. Simultaneously, the i of the word is is innerly present to her, but not in a voice spoken or heard, and not seen. She apprehends it as a letter or word-portion, not as a sound. Also simultaneously she is slightly bodily aware of her middle finger [which, on retrospect, she thinks is poised to hit the I key on her keyboard].
Sample 4.2 [9:45]: Sadie innerly apprehends n’t, [the end of can’t, but the ca (has doubtless already passed and) is not (or no longer) directly present at the moment of the beep.] These letters, [like the i of is in 4.1,] is not in a voice, spoken or heard, and not seen. Simultaneously, she is visually drawn to a round, silver-dollar-sized, white region, clearer in the center and less and less clear (fading) further from the center. This white circular region does not comport with the actual physics of the screen—it’s her creation. It does not have a border, and is circular in that it fades out as distant from the center. Finally, least present, she apprehends herself as being (30%ish) blank, a blankness that on retrospection she understood as being thinking / planning what she was going to write.
Sample 4.3 [28:09]: Sadie's experience is blank (nothing in experience) but she retrospectively recognizes herself to have been thinking with no prominence and no details. She’s simultaneously noticing the black and white letter-y shapes of text on her computer screen, a visual sensory awareness of the characteristics, not at all about the words.
Sample 4.4 [33:05]: [Sadie is walking through her kitchen.] She sees in her periphery and senses/is aware of the position of a pile of dishes to her right, especially their position in relation to her right hand. Her experience is not primarily aimed at the dishes over there but more so at the space between her and the dishes. [Her experience at this moment was not very strong. She was a bit mindless.]
Sample 4.5 [42:41]: [Sadie is trying to recall the name of James Buchanan.] She somehow apprehends the Juh (the sound of the letter J, though there is no auditory experience (no inner speaking or hearing). Simultaneously, she notices a glimmery-light reflection on her turned-off computer screen.
Sample 4.6 [46:50]: [Sadie is reading, at the moment a word beginning with th (let’s call it therefore, but Sadie did not recall the actual word at the time of the interview).] Her experience is of th, not as a sound but as a word-portion. [She’s not at all aware of what she’s reading, did not know whether she was reading with comprehension. Just somehow aware of the th of the current word.] Simultaneously, she’s thinking, [again on the low end of the choateness spectrum,] without the content specified [even though, after the beep, she can say that the thinking was a quite complex—wondering why light doesn’t bend around corners like other types of waves.]
Sadie collected three samples. We discussed all of them. We continued to encounter the experience of thinking without experiencing the content of that thinking and sensory awarenesses....
In general—sampling day 5: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the fifth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.
With Sadie in particular: Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sample 5.1 [0:46]: [Sadie is chewing a strawberry.] She feels on her teeth and tongue coolness, squishiness, and crunchiness, one sensory experience with three different tactile aspects all experienced simultaneously. [The coolness and squishiness are from the flesh of the strawberry whereas the crunchiness is from the leaves which she has not removed prior to eating. Notably, she is not tasting the strawberry.]
Sample 5.2 [2:42]: [Sadie is staring at her cell phone,] idly (10 or 20% of the experience) noticing the brightness [of the white screen which happens to be Facebook or some similar app, though she isn’t noticing any of the Facebook-y details/text/etc.] She is simply taking in the brightness. At the same time but even less salient (that is, somewhere between 1% and 5% of her experiential ‘faculties’/energy), [she is thinking hard] but has little or no direct experience of thinking. [Despite the fact that she understood herself to be thinking hard, she had absolutely no at-the-moment-of-the-beep experience of the content of that thinking.]
Sample 5.3 [11:48]:[Sadie is looking at her deck,] noticing the shininess, a visual sensory awareness. At the same time but less salient (maybe 5 or 10% of the experience), she has some small/not-very-engaged experience of thinking [but not at all detailed, including no direct experience of what she’s thinking about. This thinking aspect is slightly more present than the thinking in 5.2 but otherwise the same phenomenally. That is, Sadie believably discriminated the amount of experience of the thinking process: more in 5.3 than in 5.2, but still very small.]
Sadie collected six samples. We discussed all of them. We continued to encounter the experience of thinking without experiencing the content of that thinking and sensory awarenesses. There were examples of innerly singing and innerly hearing songs....
In general—sampling day 6: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the sixth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.
With Sadie in particular: Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sample 6.1 [0:09]: [Sadie is outside.] At the moment of the beep, present to her is a—just that word, not in a voice or any other audio, but definitely present. [a is part of the sentence Aha, so Randy is not a _______ . At the moment of the beep she did not know the word that would fill the blank, but later she speculated without confidence that the word might be perfectionist.]
Sample 6.2 [4:58]: [Sadie is walking to the gardening shed.] Most salient, she innerly hears a chorus of a dozen or so simultaneous Sadies singing the "solong"s from "So long and thanks for all the fish." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_dUmDBfp6k&t=216s). Simultaneously she sees tree bark on the ground and notices the splotchy pattern of green lichen, a visual sensory awareness of the pattern.
Sample 6.3 [14:44]:[Sadie is outside engaged in some gardening activity.] She’s innerly singing "Heartbeat" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Wf46tLonM&t=34s). At the moment of the beep, she innerly sings, "Feel my heartbeat *jumble of chh-heavy consonant sounds* like a symphony" where the consonant jumble replaces the words she does not know. This is in Sadie’s own voice and seems accurate to the real song[, including that it is sung at a much higher pitch than Sadie herself is capable of producing in real life. Moreover, her inner voice has a somewhat produced/AutoTune’d quality as is consistent with the real song].
Sample 6.4 [19:48]:[Sadie is outside gardening.] Mostly (80%) she has no experience, or perhaps an experience just slightly beyond nothing, a slight, inchoate awareness of something. This is not merely an absence but is somehow the presence of absence. Simultaneously, she (15%) feels cold/sharp pressure in the bottom of her right index finger [in fact produced by the trowel digging into her hand.] Just barely in experience (somewhere between 0 and 1%), she idly sees the soil.
Sample 6.5 [29:52]:[Sadie is gardening.] At the moment of the beep, she sees a particularly dark patch of dirt and is trying to see if there is depth to it [which, at the moment, she cannot perceive because of the dark color of the soil and the fact that it is shadowed with few contrasts or other signs of depth].
Sample 6.6 [32:54]: Mostly, Sadie has a vague sense of thinking that is just one notch above nothing [as in 6.4]. At the same time, she idly sees a dark spot on the bottom of her computer screen [but is not particularly noticing the darkness or any other sensory quality—just seeing the real spot.]
Sadie collected six samples. We discussed all of them. We continued to encounter the experience of thinking without experiencing the content of that thinking and sensory awarenesses. ...
In general—sampling day 7: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the seventh sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.
With Sadie in particular: Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sample 7.1 [0:23]: Present to Sadie are the (inner) words (not auditory, spoken, or heard), "Find [the soda stream top]." [This is, in fact, a message she will later write on a Post-It note as a reminder to look for the top.] Her experience is of the stream of words "Find the soda stream top" but is interrupted at the word "find."
Sample 7.2 [6:03]: [Sadie is about to type Justin Bieber into her phone, perhaps as part of a journal entry.] Present to her (50%) is J [the letter]. The remaining 50% of her experience is a directly-experienced but extremely inchoate thinking; she senses at the moment of the beep (before the footlights of consciousness) that she’s engaged in thinking but the details/content/etc. are very remote.
Sample 7.3 [12:07]: [Sadie is watching a bird through a pair of binoculars.] She (50%) notices the streaks on the bird’s underbelly, a visual sensory awareness of the streaks’ thinness, close-togetherness, and brokenness (almost as if dotted). At the same time (50%), she notices the lack of dotness on the bird’s chest [which would confirm this is a song sparrow].
Sample 7.4 [17:01]: [Sadie is standing on a road.] Most salient (75%) is a directly experienced but highly inchoate/remote thinking. The details are not at all present but she senses she is thinking--the presence (before the footlights of consciousness) of extremely inchoate thinking. At the same time, she notices the curve in the road, a visual sensory awareness that isn’t too salient/powerful (20% of the experience). Even less salient (5%), she hears the peter-peter-peter song [of a titmouse] behind her and up and to the left.
Sample 7.5 [23:52]: Sadie (50%) has a vague sense of thinking which includes many ideas/threads/whatever, two of which are distinctly present: not to fall down the stairs and not to step on the cat. These are cognitive ideas, not explicitly in words, pictures, or other symbols. At the same time (50%), she idly sees the carpet off to the side in front of her. She is not particularly interested in it or noticing any of its qualities—just seeing it.
Sample 7.6 [29:03]: At the moment of the beep, mostly (99%) she is engaged in [another of the] extremely inchoate but directly present thinkings (cf. 7.2, 7.4). Barely in experience (1%), she notices the parallel-line-ness [of the frame that forms the left edge of her laptop screen], a visual sensory awareness.
This is Sadie's final sampling day. She collected five samples. We discussed all of them. We continued to encounter the experience of thinking without experiencing the content of that thinking and sensory awarenesses. We also spent the last few minutes discussing the sample review meeting, which will be the next step in this process....
In general—sampling day 8: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the seventh sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.
With Sadie in particular: Sadie seems motivated to be transparent and to increase her skills of apprehending and describing experience.
Sample 8.1 [2:48]: [Sadie is throwing breadcrumbs into her brother’s pond trying to attract minnows.] At the moment of the beep, mostly (70%), her mind is blank, a directly-experienced but completely unspecified/inchoate nothingness, like a waiting around for something to happen. [And, in retrospect, she can say that the waiting around is oriented outward; she is waiting for something to happen external to her, not for some internal phenomenon, though the externality is not directly present to her at the moment, just a quality she can comment on after the beep, especially by comparison to sample 8.3.] At the same time, she (30%) notices the bright white (particularly the brightness) of a bread crumb (floating in the pond), a visual sensory awareness.
Sample 8.2 [6:46]: [Sadie’s eyes are aimed at a stream, but she isn’t experiencing anything visual.] [As in 8.1,] she (50%) experiences nothing, like a waiting-around for something to happen/appear/grab her attention. At the same time, she (50%) innerly sings in her own voice Adele’s "Rolling in the Deep." Her inner voice is singing at a higher pitch than her actual voice is capable of. There seems to be an instrumental backing, but she does not innerly hear it; she somehow senses the timbre/texture and experiences herself as singing along with the [unheard] instrumentals.
Sample 8.3 [11:36]: [Sadie has been catching fish in her brother’s pond this morning.] She’s looking at the bands on a fish, purposefully looking at the spacing and other characteristics of the bands [apparently because she is trying to determine whether this fish is the same kind they caught yesterday.] At the same time, she experiences an expectant/waiting nothingness [perhaps which will be filled with some feeling of familiarity or unfamiliarity between this fish and yesterday’s fish.] [This 8.3 nothingness is very similar to that in 8.1, yet there is some experiential difference between it and 8.1. On retrospect, she can say that the difference from sample 8.1 arises because, at this beep, she is waiting around for something internal to happen (the sense/feeling of familiarity or not) whereas, at sample 8.1, she was waiting around for something external to happen. However, the internality/externality is not an aspect of the direct experience.
Sample 8.4 [18:20]: Sadie is (30%) looking at the floor and notices intersecting lines [which happen to be created by a piece of straw on the wood-grained floor], a visual sensory awareness. At the same time, she (20%) feels a moderately large/uncomfortable amount of pressure in her finger [as she tries to put on her shoe without untying it first], a bodily sensory awareness. These two aspects of experience, while the only things present to her, do not seem to activate all of her experiential faculties/energy, engaging really only 50% or so of that energy (30% lines, 20% pressure). [There is no other phenomenon that makes up the remaining 50% in experience. Unlike samples 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3, there is no directly experienced nothing/waiting-around-for-something. There is just the lines and pressure which are not particularly salient, and from that lack of salience Sadie retrospectively infers that there is a 50% pure nothing. But that pure nothing is not experienced.]
Sample 8.5 [25:19]: [Sadie’s eyes are aimed at her brother’s iPad sitting on the kitchen counter, but that doesn’t register at all (or maybe 1%).] There is either nothing in experience (she is zoned out, "on pause") or there is a very inchoately experienced waiting, even though the content, the waiting-for-what, is not experienced. [We did not confidently differentiate those options.]
Post-sampling discussion [31:42]: Primarily, we discussed the sample review process, which will take place in about a week.
Sadie is a journalist, writing for the Washington Post among others. Here she leaves her role as DES participant and takes on the journalist role, asking Russ and Alek some questions about the DES process and their involvement in it....
The questioning meandered, as good interviews do, but here is a rough outline of topics covered:
[0:15]: How do Sadie’s results compare to her pre-sampling notions?
[6:04]: Is DES idiographic science?
[8:32]: What have you learned from your DES investigations?
[12:20]: What about face-blindness?
[14:56]: What is Alek’s take?
[18:28]: What about emotion and visualization?
[23:00]: Why do people mistake your results, which are about experience, for differences between people?
[28:36]: More about face-blindness.
[36:24]: What are your contributions to inner experience research (on categorization in science)?
[49:28]: Why did you say that psychology is ‘defensive’?
[53:01]: Sadie’s reflections on participating in DES.
As is typical in DES, Russ and Alek wrote an idiographic description of Sadie's experience as sampled across the eight sampling days. Here it is....
The salient-characteristic description process begins with a 'sample review', in which Russ, Alek, and Sadie revisited all Sadie's samples as part of the way of allowing salient characteristics to emerge. That review required two sessions; for transparency, we present the videos of these conversations here and here (we do not intend to provide their transcripts--too much work for too little gain).
Following the sample review, Russ and Alek at first independently and then together agreed on a tentative list of salient characteristics. Then Russ and Alek independently returned to each sample and rated it for the presence/absence of all the salient characteristics. Then Russ and Alek met in a procedure DES calls 'rectification'--the discussion of all samples where Russ's and Alek's ratings were discrepant. The video of the rectification meeting is here. Sometimes a discrepancy can be resolved by recognizing that one or the other was mistaken in their rating. Sometimes the discussion led to their recognition that they had somewhat different understandings of the the salient characteristic, in which case the characteristic itself was revised until they could agree.
All that is typical DES procedure except that in typical DES, the participant is not present for the sample review.
The written characterization is here; on outline of that document is:
Thinking-experience spectrum, including
A range of degree that a thinking process was directly apprehended as ongoing at the moment of the beep (ranging from not at all to directly apprehended)
A range of degree that the content of thinking was directly apprehended (ranging from none to directly apprehended)
Sensory awareness
Words present, including
No inner speech
The experience of words without the experience of their semantic meaning
The experience of individual letters or parts of words
A discussion of whether Sadie should be considered 'face blind' or 'cognitive-emotional-experiential-content blind'
