Use of Introspection in Scientific Psychological Research
Use of introspection in scientific psychological research
D. Laplane 0
0 La Salpetriere, 47 Bd de I'Hopital , 75651 Paris, Cedex 13 , France
The use of introspection is unavoidable even in psychological research on animals. Difficulties may arise from the absence of reliable introspective data; it is suggested that this could be the case for the so-called "reward system". In other circumstances confusion comes from using introspection without being aware of it: speaking and thinking have for many years been considered as the same operation, but the reason for this belief is not clearly documented and it may be suspected of being only introspection. Amongst other evidence, a careful and conscious use of introspection demonstrated by auto-analyses of former aphasic patients strongly suggests that language and thought are quite distinct entities.
Aphasia - Auto-observations - Introspection - Reward system - Thought-language relationship
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The aim ofthis paper is to show that, since some introspec
tion is inevitable, even in scientific psychological
research, it is better to be aware of it and use it critically
than to be under its influence without realizing it. It is out
of the question to reconsider the condemnation of the
introspective methods applied to cognitive psychology as
they were used in the early years ofthis century, in particu
lar by the School of Wiirzburg. The sanction passed by
Watson in 1913 is irrevocable. We shall see however that it
is very difficult not to inject a dose of introspection into
studies in psychology, even in animals.
A simple example will suffice to remind us of this fact.
When we see a rat which is given electric shocks crying,
fighting, trying to bite off the electrodes, we think it is suf
fering and that the procedure is meant to study something
about pain in rats. I am not here to criticize the use of this
evidence; I merely wish to point out that only through
introspection can we understand the rat's reaction: we
know that in similar circumstances we would suffer. This
use of introspection is confirmed by common sense and
universal consensus.
Even the most convinced defenders of behavioural psy
chiatry have to admit that in mood disorders, the feeling of
grief felt by the patient is the first sign of depression. It is
accepted as the first element pointing to that disease by the
DSM-III-R ("depressed mood ... as indicated by either
subjective account or observation by others", '~diminished
interest or pleasure", fatigue, feeling of worthlessness,
etc.) besides other disorders more specifically behavioural
such as psychomotor agitation, retardation, variations of
weight and so on. In the same way, in schizophrenia, the
first sign of the disorder is the appearance of erratic ideas.
Even ifthese elements are viewed from the angle of speech
patterns to the extent that we only know these disorders via
language, we still have to admit that speech stems from
internal data known by the patient only through introspec
tion. Clearly, if the authors of this classification had been
able to avoid using introspection, they would have done
so. Elsewhere, I have documented a disorder usually due
to bilateral lesions of the striato-pallidal formation which I
have called "loss of self-activation"
(Laplane, 1990)
. The
external behaviour of these patients is characterized by
hours of complete inactivity, even when not asleep they
display lack of interest, of initiative, etc. This is very simi
lar to the extreme slowdown of major depressions and
even catatonia. Indeed, some of these patients with loss of
self-activation were thought to be suffering from major
depression or catatonia, sometimes from one, then the
other. But there is an important difference between the
patients suffering from major depression and those suffer
ing from loss of psychic self-activation: the former brood
over dark ideas and the latter brood over no idea at all.
Questioned about their mental activity during their long
hours of inactivity, they deny brewing dark ideas; they
insist they are not bored. When pressed to describe what
goes through their minds, they use words like emptiness,
hollowness, lack, nothingness. One of them, when I
insisted that one always thinks of something, answered:
"Perhaps you do, Doctor, but I don't". The clinical pattern
of these patients is therefore very specific, so long as you
accept what they say they feel. It goes without saying that
if these patients are believed, it is in large part because
their words are confirmed by their general behaviour. In
the same way, the finding of metabolic disorders in the
frontal regions by the PET camera brings an additional
objective argument. The data from introspection are
confirmed by objective elements. This is an overt use of intro
spection open to anyone's criticism, but due to objective
correlations, and also to a sort of trust in beings similar to
ourselves, it will be taken into consideration in spite of the
strangeness of severe disorders and the absence of any cor
responding experience in the normal subject. Another
obvious condition is to limit the introspection to very
simple questions, contrary to those asked by introspective
psychology which had hoped to see into the intimate
development of behaviour processes. Some examples
corning from scientific data however show a questionable
use of introspection. We shall look first into the brain
reward system, then into the burning question of interior
language.
In the first case, what is missing is a clear introspective
reference, which means that the interpretation of definite
behavioural data is, to say the least, chancy. Everyone
knows the early experiments by
Olds and Milner (1954)
:
an electrode, the discharges of which were controlled by a
lever, was implanted into the brain of a rat, while the lever
was settled in the cage for the rat's use. Ifthe electrode was
placed in the correct cerebral areas, the rat was seen to lean
compulsively on the lever thus stimulating himself to the
point of forgetting elementary functions, mating, eating or
drinking, even leading, in some cases, to death. The auth
ors immediately decided that the animal's behaviour was
due to the "rewarding" effect of each of the discharges.
The expression "reward" was used in order not to use the
word "reinforcement" which deals with a slightly different
order of things: "reinforcement" supposes a conditioning
process whereas here, strictly speaking, there is not one.
The choice of word is not, however, without any meaning.
"Reiteration", for example, would have been totally neu
tral. Obviously, "reward" has some psychological intro
spective connotation with which we are all familiar. Many
scientists have thought inwardly what journalists said
aloud when they spoke of the pleasure electrodes. The
journalists' naive expression has the merit of being honest
and unequivocal. As a matter of fact, this type of ex
perience does not refer to any introspective data, the
assumed interpretation might be the right one, but we can
not be sure. Nothing tells us that the discharges bring about
a reward which we cannot separate from a feeling of plea
sure. Some patients with bilateral lesions of the basal gan
glia, with or without the loss of auto-activation mentioned
earlier, may show compulsive behaviour lasting up to
several hours. Two of them could flick an electric switch
on and offfor 15 min at a time. When asked about it, they
explained that they could not help it but did not draw any
pleasure from it, except perhaps a lessening of anxiety.
They realized that their behaviour was socially disturbing,
and they would have liked to get rid of it. Are the two
cases, the rats' and human beings', comparable? It is diffi
cult to say. Experiments in man using self-stimulation do
exist and give some support to the usual interpretation.
However, conclusions are far from clear. Animals and
men during an experimental process are in a situation quite
different from that of human beings suffering from spon
taneous brain damage. But a similarity is not beyond
possibility. If the traditional word "reward" corresponded
to reality, it would not apply since the patients were not
happy with their spectacular activities. To me, the issue
does not seem in the least settled, but there seems to be
sufficient doubt to suggest that we at least stop interpret
ing. The consequences are quite important: we should con
sider that the system responsible for the reiteration of the
behaviour has to do not so much with the stimuli of con
ditioned reflexes, but rather with a break which would pre
vent a program once initiated from going on indefinitely.
A far more dangerous example of introspection, and the
one which has had the greater influence on the evolution of
philosophy and the neurosciences, deals with internal lan
guage and its relation to thought. The issue has been
debated for centuries, even to the early years of this one.
There cannot be thought without language, or so we are
told. But what proof are we given?
Sokolov (1972)
wrote a
long history on the ideas of the relation between thought
and language. There are only a priori assumptions leaning
either toward separation of the two or their amalgamation.
Internal experience seems to have been the only foun
dation for these assumptions. One cannot think about any- .
thing without the mediation of an internal language. No
one can deny the role of language in everyday life,
especially when problems become difficult. One can rea
sonably deduce from this that, in the normal adult, lan
guage plays a major part in mental life. On the other hand,
in favour of a relative independence of thought, many
mathematicians presented advanced introspective data
(given in answer to questions by the French mathema
tician J. Hadamard, 1975)
. But this impressive evidence is
finally rejected as corning from subjective data. To Ein
stein's statement in favour of a thought without language
is opposed Bohr's: "... no proper human thinking is
imaginable without the use of concepts framed in some
language which every generation has to learn anew". In
the end, one subjective argument is just replaced by
another one. The only objective argument is Piaget's in his
studies of the differential development of thought and lan
guage. From his studies, Piaget formulates a theory that
thought takes precedence in every case. It sterns from sen
sorimotor acts; the only use of language is to structure the
"thought-acts" and to socialize them. Sokolov's com
ments are typical: "It is true that thoughts cannot arise
ex nihilo and that they presuppose manipulation of objects
to be based on. But it is also quite evident that sensori
motor acts in themselves, without cooperation and forma
tion of them in verbal acts (naming, classification,
generalization, etc.), would never be able to lead the child
past the stage of the "sensorimotor intellect". All that pre
cedes makes the theory of genetic asynchronism of
thought and speech rather artificial." He might as well say
that the young child approaches language without any
organized thought .... What is this statement based upon?
This time perhaps more on ideology than on introspection.
For we know that Marx (quoted by Sokolov) wrote: "lan
guage is the immediate reality of thought", and "ideas
have no existence apart from language". Anyway no sup
porting evidence is brought forward. Are we sure that in
1992, in our western world, ideology, that is to say pre
eminence of ideas over facts, is not still at work? In any
case, we can but agree with Soko10v's conclusion to his
account: "The discussion so far makes it quite evident that
the relation of language to thought is as yet unsolved. It is
also evident that any further discussion may be made more
fruitful if it is based on precise psychological and physi
ological investigations". This is obviously the aim of his
book. Unfortunately, the remainder of the work only man
ages to show the usual interpenetration of thought and lan
guage in normal persons although it points out some
interesting facts, in particular that the so-called interior
language is often translated into an electrical activity ofthe
muscles ofthe floor of the mouth. I shall not discuss Soko
lov's book further, but must point out that the statement
that thought and language are superimposed is still held as
true in many contemporary writings without any proof
other than the feeling of the philosopher or the scientist
that he cannot think without words.
If we wish to make progress on the issue of the relation
between language and thought, we must study pathologi
cal cases of apparent dissociation between language and
thought. The most common cases are found in aphasia. In
order to remain within the subject of this article, introspec
tion, we shall talk only about auto-observations of aphas
ics who recovered well enough to be able to express what
they remember of their aphasic episode. In a recent article
(Laplane, 1992)
, I reported and discussed such a case of
auto-observation in a patient who had made her own
migraine diagnosis and had decided on her own aspirin
treatment while in the midst of an aphasic attack with
massive loss of vocabulary, before any headache had
started, in spite of the fact that she had never suffered from
a similar attack before, but only ordinary migraines. Other
auto-observations are known in the literature, but they
have been little explored, probably from fear of critics in
the scientific community which is supposed to be sus
picious of any introspection even though the same com
munity inadvertently makes use of it as I have tried to
show. Worse, these auto-observations have had their most
important parts omitted, doubtless when they did not fit in
with the theme the writers wanted to develop
(Alajouanine
and Lhermitte, 1964)
. The best known of these auto-obser
vations is Lordat's because it is the oldest. It is also the
most naive in so far as it was published in 1843, when no
one was interested in aphasia. Lordat was teaching at the
Montpellier School of Medicine. By a rather extraordinary
coincidence, Lordat had been interested in aphasia
which he called "alalia", before he hiIpself became an
aphasic. With regard to the description of his aphasic
troubles, the observation is of such precision and accuracy
that it is not possible to doubt the auto-observation qual
ities of its author. What he most insists on is the integrity of
thought, which he calls "the intimate feeling", and he
reproaches his predecessors for not having separated "loss
of speech from loss of intelligence". Here are the most sig
nificant extracts: "When I was awake and on my own, 1
talked wordlessly to myself of my life occupations, of my
studies, so dear to me. I had no difficulty in exercising my
power of thought. After years of teaching, 1congratulated
myself for being able to organise lessons, for not finding it
difficult to change the order of my thoughts as it pleased
me. The memory of principles, dogmas, abstract ideas was
as when 1was in health ... but as soon as someone came to
see me, I realised my disorder and the fact that I could not
say: "Hello! How are you?". And so 1had to admit that the
internal thinking could exist without words, that the
embodiment of thoughts and their formation and combi
nation were two different things. And so, while recognis
ing the utility of language to conserve ideas, to stock them
in archives and to transmit them, I could not agree to all
Condillac said on the necessity, the indispensability (in
italics in Lordat' s text) of verbal signs for thinking. When
thinking about the Christian formula called doxology:
Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Ghost,
etc. 1felt that I knew all its ideas even though my memory
could not suggest one word of it." Quoting an 1834 philo
sophical article, Lordat writes: "They doubt that thought
exists before speech. They say that speech is a prerequi
site, but they are wrong .... They say they can't think with
out using words. But 1 know, from my own experience,
that it is possible to think, combine abstract things, without
having any word to express them and without thinking
about it in the least." It is quite possible that Lordat had
some illusions about the clarity of his own thinking, and he
does not bring clear evidence of it; all the same, no one
could doubt that he could dwell with ease in abstract
spheres. Even if the quality of this exercise may be
doubted, abstract thoughts can undeniably be called up
without words. Personally, I have had religious patients
who stated that never during their aphasic episodes had
they lost their sense of God, an apparently abstract notion,
or lost the ability to pray, although it was without words.
Another physician has left us his memoirs as an aphasic:
Dr Saloz whose memoirs were reported and commented
on by
Naville (1918)
. The conclusions are essentially the
same: "I had my thoughts, my ideas, my concepts". To be
honest, we have to admit that Saloz found them "perhaps a
little modified all the same; a little vague; I seem to
remember that everything seemed a little woolly, a little
cloudy, as in a dream or rather a nightmare; I did not know
either if I had left for another world or what. At times, I had
the impression of something like a veil weighing down on
me and blurring my thoughts as when you dream with your
eyes open; I had a distant feeling of deja vu". We must
point out, however, that this observation does not contra
dict Lordat's, but leads one to think that Saloz's lesions
were more extensive. The extent of Lordat's are unknown,
but an autopsy was done on Saloz by Naville, and we know
that the lesions were very extensive. There are many dif
ferent aphasias and an even greater diversity of aphasics. It
is unlikely that all aphasics keep the same ability for
abstract thinking. What is important for the question of the
relation between language and thought is that some do still
retain it. Lordat is not the only witness in favour of the
theory. Alexander, a Canadian philosopher, recently pub
lished his memoirs as an aphasic (1990). Like his prede
cessors, he notes that: "aphasics view themselves as the
same people they were prior to the stroke, potentially as
capable as before, and at first expect recognition of their
responsible adulthood. They know they only lack the abil
ity to communicate with language", and further down, this
remark of very great importance: "For instance, I had a
vivid concept of my wife in the ambulance but her name
was forgotten; I had a concept of myself but my name was
forgotten too; for 2 months I had a colorful concept of a
specific Greek philosopher, but his name was forgotten."
It can be assumed that for a professional philosopher, to
have a "colorful concept of a Greek philosopher", is not
merely to remember the facial features which have been
attributed to him but indeed an idea of his philosophy.
Now, as in the early part of the century, introspection in
cognitive psychology, interpreted by different observers,
may lead to opposite conclusions. Some, the majority,
leaning on so-called obviousness, based on their own ex
perience or on a certain consensus amongst contemporary
scientists, insist that language and thought are but one;
others, a minority, but speaking from a personal ex
perience worthy of consideration, come to an opposite
conclusion. The weight of ideology is not negligible
either.
Joanette et al. (1991)
questioned a number of
aphasics and established that: "although aphasics lose to a
variable degree the ability to use language, they seem
nonetheless to be able to think functionally; if the one who
said: 'I don't have any more words inside myself than out
side ... ' speaks the truth, it means that his thinking has to
do with an interior language similar to that observed when
trying to express himself outwardly. It is too easy then,
therefore dangerous, to posit to a non-linguistic dimension
to this kind of thinking. This rash statement etc....." One
does not quite see why an easy deduction has to be rash,
nor why one should make things difficult rather than
simple, unless it is to answer an ideology so much part of
oneself that it cannot be questioned. The evidence on
which those who are less categorical may base themselves
is at least as good as that of their opponents. There is a
great difference however between the two types of ex
perience which lead to these opposite conclusions: in the
one case, the subjects are normal and in their experience
language plays such an important role that it may seem
exclusive; in the other case, pathology creates a cleavage
between thought and language, which is not felt under nor
mal conditions. This separation being accepted, there still
would be, under normal conditions, a constant and close
interaction between thought and language. It is clear that
the specialization of each brain hemisphere would never
have been shown if unilateral lesions, and more recently
the cutting of the corpus callosum, had not allowed the
separation of functions which we could not have imagined
to be distinct from our own experience. For these reasons,
the evidence for and against the separation of thought and
language do not seem to have equal weights. I do not mean
to say that sufficient proof of this separation has been
yielded, but that there is enough evidence for seeking and
examining the other arguments in favour of this theory. By
other arguments I do not mean other introspective analy
ses such as Hadamard's book (1975) on invention in the
field of mathematics, or
Janson's contribution (1988
). In
spite of their undeniably high interest, they lend them
selves to the same criticism as any introspection in the be
havioural domain. They bring supplementary information
as long as we are able to correlate them to others more
objective. It is not the aim of this paper to explore these
possible channels; we shall merely mention some: study of
paraphasia in normal language and their influence on the
comprehension of texts; influence of the context on the
interpretation of texts; study of non-verbal behavioural
abilities in aphasics, in children before language appears,
in deaf-mutes, in animals, etc.... The symposium on
thought without language held in 1988
(Weiskrantz, 1988)
shows that the scientific community is ready to swing back
toward the idea that there may well be thought without
language. Philosophers will find it much harder to accept.
It will remain to be determined whether this thought with
out language is infra-verbal-as many believe-or
whether it is language's raison d' etre, its meaning. A lot is
at stake here, and this is probably the reason why ideol
ogies have taken over from facts. We can see how, when so
much is at stake, a non-identified but inadvertently used
introspection can look like false evidence and change the
orientation of a supposedly scientific argument.
Acknowledgement
I am indebted to Dr R. Giggins and Mrs M. Laplane-Gibbins for
translation of this paper into English.
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