Resampling (Narrative) Stream of Consciousness: Mind Wandering, Inner Speech, and Reading as Reversed Introspection

Abstract

This article promotes the idea that current cognitive models of mind wandering and inner speech can help us better understanding the phenomenological constituents of what Joyce calls “the mystery of the conscious” as simulated by modernist literary investigations. We will rework a model of perceptual decoupling (or how attention disengages from perception) and peripheral awareness (the interplay of focus and periphery in perception).On the other hand, we argue that modernist introspective explorations can challenge, correct and update cognitive models. We also reflect on reading as a process reversing authorial introspective quests (presenting a model of reading as reversed introspection).