Resampling (Narrative) Stream of Consciousness: Mind Wandering, Inner Speech, and Reading as Reversed Introspection
MFS: Modern Fiction Studies December 1, 2022 M. Bernini, C. Fernyhough
Modernist literary techniques, particularly those used by James Joyce, can both inform and be informed by contemporary cognitive science. The essay proposes that cognitive models of mind wandering and inner speech—specifically perceptual decoupling and peripheral awareness—help explain the phenomenological experience of consciousness depicted in modernist literature. Conversely, modernist introspective explorations can challenge and refine these cognitive models. The authors also present a model of reading as a form of reversed introspection, where the reader retraces the author's inward journey.