Schedule of Events | Symposia

Does scientific research reflect the diversity of mental experience?

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Douglas Forrest¹ (douglas.forrest@ubc.ca), Desmond Wood-Anderson¹, Andre Zamani¹, Caitlin Mills², Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva¹; ¹University of British Columbia, ²University of Minnesota

Mental experiences range from being closely tied to current sensations to being relatively independent of them. Mental processes tied to current sensations have been studied under the rubrics of exteroception and interoception, whereas processes independent of current sensations have been studied under many names, such as mind-wandering, mental time travel, and autobiographical memory. Here we propose a framework categorizing mental experiences based on their origin, defining exteroception as experiences originating from the outside world (e.g., vision), interoception as experiences originating from within the body (e.g., heart-rate perception), and conceptive experiences as those originating from within the mind (e.g., memories or thoughts). We empirically estimate the degree to which each stream of experience is represented within the scientific literature, including the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psychology. We downloaded and analyzed 4.2 million research article abstracts in neuroscience and psychology from the Scopus database, covering publications dating back to the 1970s. We used a custom-made program to identify words in those abstracts relating to exteroception, interoception, or conception, allowing us to estimate the degree to which these themes are studied over time. Results suggest that exteroception is overrepresented relative to interoceptive and conceptive terms across a variety of fields. The conceptive stream was also underrepresented in research compared to the prevalence that it occupies in daily life. Overall, there is an indication that the percentage of research dedicated to the conceptive stream is increasing over time.

Topic Area: METHODS: Other