Externally controlled involuntary cognitions and their relations with other representations in consciousness

•It has been proposed that conscious contents often arise from reflex-like processes.•The Reflexive Imagery Task (RIT) has been used to investigate this possibility.•In the RIT, high-level conscious contents (subvocalizations) arise involuntarily.•Evidence is needed to corroborate subjects' self-reports about the subvocalizations.•Our new RIT, featuring “inter-representational dynamics,” provides such evidence.

Percepts and action-related urges often enter consciousness insuppressibly. The Reflexive Imagery Task (RIT) was developed to investigate how high-level cognitions (e.g., subvocalizations), too, can enter consciousness in this manner. Limitations of the paradigm include (a) that no data have confirmed subjects' introspections about the involuntary subvocalizations, and (b) that, in everyday life, adaptive responses to involuntary cognitions often depend on the nature of the other contents in consciousness. To address a and b, we developed an RIT in which subjects were presented with visual objects and instructed to not think of the object names. If a subvocalization did arise, however, subjects responded motorically only if the subvocalization rhymed with a word held in memory and if there was a visual “go” cue. Subjects successfully (on 0.83 of the trials) emitted this complex, “multi-determined” response, which provides evidence for the occurrence of the involuntary subvocalizations and illuminates the function of consciousness.