Séminaire Jérôme Sackur

The stream of thought has been famously described by William James as comprising distinct moments of stability and moments of transition. However, cognitive psychology faces challenges in objectively quantifying and characterizing this distinction due to the subjective nature and long timescale of these moments. In this presentation, I will discuss a series of experiments that try to address these challenges using free word production tasks ("association of ideas"), which we analyze through semantic word embedding. I will focus on two series of results. First, we show that periods of transition can be characterized as exploration in semantic space, in contrast to periods of local exploitation. Second, we show that non-semantic distractors create local disorganization within the stream of thought. Throughout, I will underscore the relevance of this characterization of the stream of thought in relation to the symptomatology of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).