The No-Report Paradigm: A Revolution in Consciousness Research?
Open accessAbstract
In the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, participants have commonly been instructed to report their conscious content. This, it was claimed, risks confounding the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) with their preconditions, i.e., allocation of attention, and consequences, i.e., metacognitive reflection. Recently, the field has therefore been shifting towards no-report paradigms. No-report paradigms draw their validity from a direct comparison with no-report conditions. We analyze several examples of such comparisons and identify alternative interpretations of their results and/or methodological issues in all cases. These go beyond the previous criticism that just removing the report is insufficient, because it does not prevent metacognitive reflection. The conscious mind is fickle. Without having much to do, it will turn inward and switch, or timeshare, between the stimuli on display and daydreaming or mind-wandering. Thus, rather than the NCC, no-report paradigms might be addressing the neural correlates of conscious disengagement. This observation reaffirms the conclusion that no-report paradigms are no less problematic than report paradigms.
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Cites
Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2006) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.946 · Cited by 2,067 · see citing works
Mind-wandering as spontaneous thought: a dynamic framework
Christoff, K., Irving, Z. C., Fox, K. C. R., Spreng, R. N., & Andrews-Hanna, J. R. (2016) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.113 · Cited by 1,376 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Namely, without a task, the participant is likely to disengage from the stimulus and engage in mind wandering or daydreaming Mind-wandering and daydreaming are states that arise spontaneously (Christoff et al., 2016) in a dynamic that alternates with focused attention to the stimulus.”
BackgroundEmpirical support for higher-order theories of conscious awareness
Lau, H., & Rosenthal, D. (2011) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2011.05.009 · Cited by 869 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Higherorder theories argue that consciousness crucially depends on processes representing oneself as being in a particular mental state (Lau and Rosenthal, 2011).”
BackgroundThe attention schema theory: a mechanistic account of subjective awareness
Graziano, M. S. A., & Webb, T. W. (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500 · Cited by 224 · see citing works
Visual processing of contour patterns under conditions of inattentional blindness
Pitts, M. A., Martínez, A., & Hillyard, S. A. (2012) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00111 · Cited by 204 · see citing works
What is wrong with the no-report paradigm and how to fix it
Block, N. (2019) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.10.001 · Cited by 176 · cited 8× · see citing works
“To overcome this problem, Block (2019) suggested a nocognition paradigm.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialPhenomenology of future-oriented mind-wandering episodes
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Cleeremans, A., Achoui, D., Beauny, A., Keuninckx, L., Martin, J.-R., Muñoz-Moldes, S., Vuillaume, L., & de Heering, A. (2020) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.11.011 · Cited by 142 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Contextual emergentism provides a natural framework for, for instance, theories that view consciousness at the personal level as grounded in learning (Cleeremans et al., 2020), coordination behavior (Solfo and van Leeuwen, 2018), or from neural prediction failure (e.”
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- Authors
- Duman, I., Ehmann, I. S., Gonsalves, A. R., Gültekin, Z., Van den Berckt, J., & van Leeuwen, C.
- Affiliations
- KU Leuven (BE)
- ORCID
- Duman, Irem
- Venue
- Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2022-05-11
- Volume
- 16
- Pages
- 861517-861517
- ISSN
- 1662-5161 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9130851
- OpenAlex
- W4280558416
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3
- FWCI
- 3.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Free Will and Agency
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- no-report paradigm, consciousness studies, neural correlates of consciousness, metacognitive reflection, attention allocation, daydreaming, mind wandering, methodological issues
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