Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com
Consciousness
and
Cognition
Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862
www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

On how a childs awareness of thinking informs

explanations of thought insertion
Garry Young

Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS29JT, UK

Received 8 February 2007
Available online 26 June 2007

Abstract
Theories of thought insertion have tended to favour either the content of the putatively alien thought or some peculiarity within the experience itself as a means of explaining why the subject dierentiates one thought from another in terms of
personal ownership. There are even accounts that try to incorporate both of these characteristics. What all of these explanations share is the view that it is unexceptional for us to experience thought as our own. The aim of this paper is to consider the means by which this awareness of the myness of thought occurs. Why is it that I, as the subject of thought,
typically experience a thought as mine? Using research which investigates the development of a childs awareness of the
act of thinking, I will evaluate leading explanations of thought insertion. It is my contention that by understanding the
means by which the awareness of ones ownership of thought develops, we can better assess explanations of thought insertion; and whilst, at present, no theory is fully able to explain the condition, the incorporation of developmental research
suggest that we should favour one in particular.
2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Thought insertion; Subjectivity; Inseparability thesis; Ownership and authorship of thought

1. Introduction
Thought insertion is most often associated with those suering from schizophrenia, and appears among
Schneiders (1959) catalogue of rst-rank symptoms. The condition is typically characterised by the attribution of ones thoughts to someone else, to the extent that inserted thoughts are not experienced as thoughts
communicated to the subject; rather it is as if anothers thoughts have been engendered or inserted in them
(Cahill & Frith, 1996, p. 278).
[T]he subject has thoughts that she thinks are the thoughts of other people, somehow occurring in her
own mind. It is not that the subject thinks that other people are making her think certain thoughts as if
by hypnosis or psychokinesis, but that other people think the thoughts using the subjects mind as a
psychological medium. (Gerrans, 2001, p. 231).
*

Fax: +44 0 1133435749.

E-mail addresses: g.m.young@leeds.ac.uk, gmyphilpsych@hotmail.com

1053-8100/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.05.005

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

849

Frith (1992) described thought insertion as dicult to understand, perhaps due to the seeming paradox
underlying the marked and rapid onset of disturbed subjectivity (Spence, 2001) in which I, as the subject of
the thought, become detached from the thought itself. (I will have more to say on what constitutes disturbed
subjectivity as we progress.) Under such circumstances, mental content is presented as quasi-autonomous;
or as bereft of its natural dimension of myness (Parnas & Sass, 2001, p. 106), resulting in the subjects denial
of ownership.1 To clarify: such detachment does not result in the subject simply losing possession of her
thoughts. She does not become a passive bystander as her thoughts are somehow taken from her; rather, it
is that she actively denies owning the thought that she experiences, claiming instead that someone else owns
it.2 (Again, I will have more to say on this later.)
Thought insertion, it seems, challenges established philosophical positions regarding the relationship
between subject and experience. In particular, the experience of detachmentof thoughts coming adrift
(Thornton, 2002)runs contrary to established views concerning the adhesion between thought and the subject of thought, for it seems that this adhesiveness can be broken (Fulford, 1995). Gibbs (2000), for example,
uses thought insertion to refute the inseparability thesisthe view that introspective awareness (the awareness
that I am presently experiencing a thought) is inseparable from subjectivity (experiencing the thought as occurring within my own psychological boundaries, that is, within the boundaries of my own mental activity). By
being introspectively aware of (my) thoughts (hereafter, simply aware), I am, in virtue of this, aware of what
constitutes the boundaries of my mental activity (what amounts to my subjective experience). In other words,
my awareness has inherent and inseparable subjectivity such that I cannot be aware of a thought without being
likewise aware that it is my thought. Thought insertion appears to challenge this view by demonstrating that
the subject can be aware of a particular thought without experiencing that thought as occurring within her
own psychological boundaries. Interpreted in this way, thought insertion constitutes evidence of introspective
awareness in the absence of subjectivity: separability rather than inseparability.
Perhaps TI [thought insertion] is an anomaly of the inseparability thesis since the subject is aware of the
thought, thus satisfying the rst condition. . .. (introspection), yet denies that the thought is her own, thus
leaving the second condition (subjectivity) unsatised. The error is that the individual mislocates the
thoughts outside of her psychological boundaries. It is the exclusion of something that should be
included within ones psychological history. As such, TI is a breakdown in the way that thoughts are
usually located relative to the self (Gibbs, 2000, p. 196).
According to Stephens (2000), the interpretation forwarded by Gibbs is based on a misunderstanding of
what is actually being claimed by those suering from thought insertion. In denying that the thought is hers,
the subject is not mislocating3 the thought beyond her own psychological boundaries; instead, her denial of
ownership stems from an absence of agency, not an absence of subjectivity. An essential characteristic of
thought insertion is that the subject does not deny that she is the subject of the thought, or that the thought
occurs in her mind (within her psychological boundaries). Hence there is no misconstrual of location; no blurring of the boundaries of mental activity in terms of what is experienced. Contrary to Gibbs, then, thought
insertion does not involve the separation of subjectivity from introspection; rather it is symptomatic of the
separation of subjectivity from agency (Stephens & Graham, 2000). Under this interpretation, the inseparability claim is in fact compatible with the phenomenon of thought insertion, for [w]hatever these patients seem
to be confused about, they [do not] seem to be confused about where the relevant thoughts occur (Stephens &
Graham, 1994, p. 5).

Here, I am using ownership in a much broader sense than I intend to use later. The switch to a more specic meaning of ownership
will be clearly indicated when it occurs.
2
I thank the anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this point.
3
In this context, talk of mislocating thought is, of course, metaphorical and not to be compared or contrasted with discussion on the
location of verbal hallucinations as mapped in egocentric space by the respective subject suering from that particular aiction. Thoughts
are experienced as being metaphorically in the head in the same manner as thoughts are commonly said to be so located by the vast
majority of people. The introduction of psychological boundaries as a means of locating thought is not meant to be understood literally in
spatial terms.

850

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

With thought insertion, the patient acknowledges ownership of the thought only in the sense that she is the
one experiencing it (in her head, as it were). However, ownership is denied when referring to the genesis of the
thought. This distinction is recognised by a number of other authors. Frankfurt (1988), for example, distinguishes between thinking and experiencing thoughts occurring in us. Similarly, Gerrans (2001) dierentiates
between ownership and authorship, claiming that authorship refers specically to the generation of thought
whereas ownership requires only that the thought be experienced as occurring within the subjects psychological boundaries. (I intend to adopt Gerrans terminology here, although Stephens and Graham prefer to use
agency rather than authorship.) Thus, when referring to the ownership of thought, I mean a thought that
the subject acknowledges she is experiencing (through introspective awareness). In other words, the subject
accepts that the thought occurs within her psychological boundaries. Authorship, on the other hand, refers
to the act of thinking and denotes the subjects acknowledgment that she has generated the thought she is
experiencing. Also, for clarication, when referring to the myness of thought, or of a thought being mine, I
mean to include both ownership and authorship, unless otherwise stated.
If a separability issue does exists then it concerns the distinction between (i) the subject within whose psychological boundaries the thought has occurred, and (ii) the subject attributed with the generation of a
thought, for this is the distinction typically made by someone suering from thought insertion. If thought
insertion tells us anything, it is that our sense of ownership and our sense of authorship are separable, not
our subjectivity and introspective awareness as Gibbs originally claimed. (The use of sense in this context
should be viewed as synonymous with introspective awareness.) From case study reports, we know that the
patient recognises that her putatively alien thoughts are thoughts that occur within her own psychological
boundaries, and that the experience is therefore her experience (she has a sense of ownership). What she denies
is that these thoughts are authored by her. This being the case, what is it about the patients experience that
leads to a denial of authorship? Conversely, what makes me, under normal circumstances, aware of a thought
as my thought (both in terms of ownership and authorship)? Is it as Frith (1992) suggests, that we have some
way of recognising our thoughts as our own; that each thought comes complete with a label saying mine; and
that if something goes wrong with this labelling process, the thought is judged to be alien?4 Experientially, we
are not aware of such a labelling system. For most people, acknowledging a thought as mine is not something
we typically do. Perhaps, then, it is as Wilkerson (1976) describes: There is no property common to all my
experiences clearly identifying them as mine, no stamp or label or laundry-mark (p. 52). Of course, it could be
the case that a labelling system exists that is subpersonal and phenomenally transparent (Metzinger, 2003). As
such, the fact that we cannot access it via introspection does not necessarily negate its presence.5 Alternatively,
one might agree with Spence (2001) that there is no necessity for thought to be labelled in this way, either at
a personal or subpersonal level, as we do not normally expect thoughts to arise from anywhere else except
our own minds (p. 165). Indeed, even the suerer of putatively alien thoughts does not (as far as I am aware)
spend time conrming (at a personal level) authorship of non-alien thoughts as and when they arise, although
presumably she can do so if required. The awareness that a thought is mine (qua authored by me) seems conspicuous only by its absence (again, at least at the personal level). Therefore, even allowing for the possibility
of subpersonal and phenomenally transparent labelling, the fact remains that inserted thoughts constitute a
denial of authorship conjectured to stem from something that is accessible to (introspective) awareness, be it in
the form of thought content or phenomenal experience.
Perhaps the alien nature of the thought is identied directly by virtue of its alien feel or content, or both.
Or perhaps there is rst a denial of authorship followed by a further deduction that the thought must belong
to someone, and as that someone is not me, it must have originated from some other (alien) source. These possibilities will be discussed further in Section 5. In the meantime, we must recognise that whether the alien
thought is identied directly, or whether it is judged to be so only after rst being identied as not authored
by me, a distinction is being made, and this distinction must be based on something. In helping to identify
4
Frith provides his own account of delusional belief based on a failure to self-monitor ones thoughts. He argues that belief in inserted
thoughts stems from the inability of the patient to monitor her own intention to think. This idea stems from a re-working of a traditional
theory of motor control. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss Friths model; suce it to say that it has been discussed in
detail by Campbell (1999), Stephens and Graham (2000) and Gallagher (2004), amongst others, who have each found problems with it.
5
I thank the anonymous referee for raising this point.

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

851

what this something might be it is important to consider the means by which I, as subject, become aware of a
thought as mine. Is this awareness acquired or is it given within the experience itself?
According to Parnas and Sass (2001), [f]irst-personal givenness is not something incidental to the being of
experience; rather, the subject of experience is a feature or function of its givernness (p. 103). Perhaps, then,
myness, qua ownership, is given within experience; after all, this aspect of what makes a thought mine is not
denied in cases of thought insertion.6 That issue aside, at least for the moment (although I will return to it
later), if we follow the distinction made by Stephens and Graham, and accept that the problem of thought
insertion is a problem of authorship, then it is to the question of authorship that we should draw our attention.7 Therefore, we need to ask: Is authorship of thought acquired or given? In response, I would like to discuss ndings in the area of developmental psychology, specically in relation to a childs introspective
awareness of her own thoughts and stream of consciousness.
2. Researching the childs awareness of thinking
Implicit within our everyday folk psychological understanding of our own and others actions is the
assumption that we, as subjects of experience, are able to monitor and describe mental activity that relates
to these actions in the form of beliefs, desires or other psychological states (Estes, 1998). It is therefore unexceptional to declare that as adults and older children we are generally aware (as in, have a basic understanding) of the fact that we think, or that we are able to access certain aspects of our thinking. However, the extent
to which this access develops and/or is acquired during childhood and the developmental structure it takes are
largely unknown to us.
What we do know, according to Flavell, Green, and Flavell (1995), is that pre-school children (aged
between 3 and 5) understand certain facts about thinking. They know, for example, that in contrast to inanimate objects it is people (and perhaps some animals) who think (see also Flavell, 1999). In addition, preschoolers understand that thinking is a private, internal, in-the-head activity to be contrasted with the
public expression of behaviour (see also Wellman & Hickling, 1994). Likewise, they know that a thought
(qua mental image or dream) about an object is not the same as the actual (physical) object; and that thinking
about it can occur in its absence (see also Wellman & Estes, 1986). In short, research supports the conclusion
that an understanding of thinking, dened broadly as mentally attending to some content, is present to some
degree in preschoolers, although a more sophisticated understanding develops over the ensuing school years
(Flavell & Flavell, 2004).
Despite having some knowledge of thinking, preschoolers are nevertheless decient in their understanding
of certain other thinking-related events. Generally, they are poor at identifying when someone is thinking; or
what they might be thinking about (even in the case of their own thoughts) (Flavell et al., 1995). Moreover,
they do not assume that thinking must be taking place whenever someone is sitting quietly and/or simply looking at something; or that they themselves must have been thinking when engaged in such a task (Flavell,
Green, & Flavell, 1993). Consequently, Flavell et al. (1995) conclude that preschoolers, to a large extent,
severely underestimate the amount of mental activity taking place within a person at any given time. They
(preschoolers) fail to realise, it seems, that individuals experience a continual ow of mental contentwhat
James (1890) described as the stream of consciousness (p. 239) and Harris (1995a) referred to as the involuntary pulsation of consciousness (p. 51). In addition, they tend to overestimate the amount of (non-dreaming) mental activity that occurs in an individual who is unconscious (Flavell, Green, Flavell, & Lin, 1999). In
short, research suggests that preschoolers lack a clear understanding of what it is like, experientially, to be
conscious as opposed to unconscious (Flavell, 1999), leading to the speculative claim:
. . .that children are less aware than adults of the experiential, what-it-is-like-to-have-them, aspects of
conscious mental states such as thoughts and percepts, and instead focus almost exclusively on their cognitive content (Flavell et al., 1999, p. 411).
6
For detailed discussion on the experiential self as an inherent feature of ones experience, see Bermudez (1998) and Bermudez, Marcel,
and Eilan (1995).
7
See Coliva (2002) for an interesting discussion on whether this experiential distinction necessitates a structural distinction in thought.

852

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

In keeping with this general lack of (introspective) awareness, preschoolers show little understanding of
cognitive cueing (Gordon & Flavell, 1977). They do not appear to understand that mental events trigger other
mental events, usually in a coherent manner related to ones experiences. To illustrate: in a study by Cohen
(1993), preschoolers were told a story about a child who was thinking about beautiful owers whilst at the
beach. Later, when she saw some beautiful owers she began to think about the beach. Unlike older subjects,
the preschoolers failed to show any understanding of the association the child had made between the beach
and owers, and that experiencing the presence of one had cued the memory of the other.
Young childrens conception of thoughts is quite dierent from that of adults . . . First, the concept of a
thought (thinking, mental activity, etc.) is doubtless less salient for them than it is for most adults; they
do not think about thoughts very often spontaneously. When they are brought to think about them,
however, they are more likely than adults to regard them as isolated and largely inexplicable mental happenings, not linked to preceding cues or subsequent eects. Although they may occasionally become
aware that something instigated a thought (e.g., an instruction to think, an emotionally arousing situation) or that a thought instigated something (e.g., an action based on that thought), the question of possible causes and eects usually does not even arise for them when thinking about thinking (Flavell et al.,
1995, pp. 845).
It would seem that even if preschoolers do demonstrate awareness of the act of thinking, because they lack
an understanding of cognitive cueing, it is not equivalent to the older child/adults awareness of their stream of
consciousness. Instead, this awareness, such as it is, is of isolated islands of thought.
The cognitive discrepancy that exists between older and pre-school children in regard to meta-cognitive
ability is suggestive of a lack of what Newen and Vogeley (2003) identify as meta-representational, and also
iterative meta-representational, self-consciousness. According to Newen and Vogeley, self-consciousness operates at dierent levels of representational complexity, the most important of which are the two meta-representational levels noted above. Meta-representational self-consciousness enables an infant to construct a mental
model of [herself] and of other people (p. 535). The model becomes more sophisticated when the child is then
able to incorporate beliefs about what another person believes about her (iterative meta-representations).
Thus, the child (Susan) is able to construct a mental model incorporating a propositional attitude that she
(Susan) believes Mary has of hernamely Mary hopes that I (Susan) believe that school is an important factor (p. 535). The lack of understanding of cognitive cueing in the pre-schooler could constitute undeveloped
meta-representational processes as described by Newen and Vogeley in which thoughts about self and other
are not integrated into autobiographical models of self-knowledge.
In short, because preschoolers lack sustained awareness of their own mental activity (due to their sporadic
ability to perform metacognition), they are less likely to be aware of their own mental history (Flavell et al.,
1995; Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 2000). So when performing a task which requires them to express their
thoughts, the process by which they arrive at a given solution or judgement (for example) will be less accessible
to them compared to older children and adults. Similarly, if distracted, such that their thoughts stray, they
may be less likely to notice that this distraction has impacted on their own thinking, resulting in the production of less relevant thoughts. Further, Flavell, Green, and Flavell (1998) reported that these children do not
know that the mind generates a continuous and essentially unstoppable stream of consciousness, even in a
person who is not trying to think of anything (p. 129, my italic). The authors point seems to be that preschoolers are largely unaware (both in terms of introspective awareness and understanding) of the uncontrollable
nature of unbidden thoughts and, subsequently, that a thinking individual is not necessarily in control of
his thoughts all of the time. On those limited occasions when a preschooler is aware of the fact that she is
thinking thought x, she remains largely ignorant of the fact that this process forms part of her continuous
stream of consciousness, and to whether it was a thought she initiated (through the process of cognitive cueing) or was unbidden. In short, according to the ndings of Flavell, Green and Flavell, the preschooler, for the
most part, lacks awareness of the partial uncontrollability and unpredictability of the minds action (1998,
p. 129).
To recap: Awareness of thinking (both in terms of introspective awareness and understanding), for the preschooler, appears to be mostly limited to the content of thought, rather than the act itself. Preschoolers are

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

853

aware of isolated thoughts that are about things; what they lack is any sustained awareness and understanding that the process by which this thought is arrived at forms part of a continuous stream of often related
thoughts, some initiated, others involuntary. Research evidence suggests that preschoolers understand that
thoughts are private, inner entities that are not the same as physical objects (for example). But this does
not necessitate that they further equate inner and private with personal ownership (including authorship).
If I show an understanding that thoughts occur in the head and are therefore private (as in, not public), must
I also understand that they are my thoughts and mine alone? At present, the answer to this question is
unclear.8 What is clear, however, or clearer, is that the discrepancy between an awareness of the content of
thought and the act of thinking indicates that preschoolers do not yet understand that these inner, private entities are generated, let alone self-generated. If they lack any such awareness of authorship then, presumably,
they will also lack any such awareness of the what-it-is-likeness (Nagel, 1974) of initiated thought.
For a child for whom the world of thought is largely causeless, any thought might occur at any time
(Flavell et al., 1995, p. 86).
Yet what Flavell and his colleagues research consistently points to is that a childs awareness of the act of
thinking, including the uncontrollable and involuntary element within the stream of consciousness, emerges
with age. But, to reiterate, surely there is a dierence between a sense of initiated thought and a sense of
self-initiated thought? Therefore, could it not be the case that a child could experience a thought as authored
without experiencing it as self-authored? After all, it is precisely this experiential discrepancy that underscores
patient reports of thought insertion. In moving towards a fuller understanding of thought insertion, let us rst
consider how a childs awareness of self-generated thought develops. Perhaps an understanding of this will
help us better consider whether it is likely that awareness of thought, as simply initiated, occurs independently
of (if it occurs at all) an awareness of self-initiated thought.
3. Developing an awareness of inner speech
According to Flavell, Green, Flavell, and Grossman (1997), preschoolers are largely unaware, and have little understanding, of their own inner speech, or that speech can be inner. In practical task situations, research
indicates that preschoolers engage in less inner speech than older children and adults. Flavell et al. therefore
speculate that children at this age may not equate thinking with covert, inner speech. Interestingly, Estes
(1998) has this to say:
A growing body of theory and research indicates that cognitive development is not a unitary process but
is at least in part domain specic, with development proceeding at dierent rates in dierent domains
and for dierent forms of cognition. . .. If this view is correct, metacognition, in the sense of conscious
access to mental activity is not likely to be a single developmental milestone, a separate ability that once
acquired can then be universally applied to dierent types of mental activity. . . In short, children might
acquire conscious access to some forms of mental activity before they acquire it for others (p. 1346).
In a similar vein, Harris (1995b) states that dierent forms of mental activity may be more accessible to
preschoolers than others, and cites visual imagery as a developmentally early form of (introspective) awareness. If Estes and Harris are correct then the childs awareness of mental activity may not be developmentally
uniform. Thus, awareness of mental activity may initially present itself in the form of mental imagery rather
than inner speech, resulting in the young childs understanding of thinking being likewise restricted to images
alone, at least in the earliest years.
Inserted thoughts are always (as far as I am aware) reported with reference to inner speech. It seems sensible, then, to focus on the development of this type of mental activity. Vygotsky (1962) (see also Diaz & Berk,
1992; Berk, 1994) noted that overt speech becomes more private and goal-directed as the child engages in more
8
It would be useful to investigate whether preschoolers understand that the content of thought they experience is just thattheir
experience. However, how this question could be eectively asked or the extent to which the child could articulate a response is dicult to
anticipate.

854

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

and more demanding tasks. This private speech (that is, speech not directed at another), in turn, becomes more
covert until, eventually, it is fully internalised as inner speech. The development and convergence of the childs
private/inner speech with her ability to engage in ever more complex practical problem solving skills amounts
to a signicant intellectual development (Vygotsky, 1962). In fact, Berk (1994) considers private speech (and
inner speech, presumably) to be an important tool that helps us overcome obstacles and acquire new skills
(p. 80), the use of which we never grow out of.
Vygotsky, and proponents of his work, oer research support for the transformation of overt speech into
covert, inner speech during the childs early years. Compatible with this, I contend, is Flavell et al.s (1993)
suggestion that cognitive cueing and the stream of consciousness develop simultaneously. A suitable context
for this development is the same problem solving arena that motivates the childs transformation of overt
speech into initially private, and then fully internalised inner speech. As Flavell, Green and Flavell note:
. . .as they become aware that they have rst one thought, then another, then another in an extended
sequence or stream, they might notice that one thought is often related semantically to, and stimulated
by, its predecessor (p. 397).
They also speculate that during times when children are awake but physically inactivesay, around bedtime, just before they fall asleepthey (the children) are more likely to become aware of their thoughts,
including inner speech. Initially, some thoughts may be more noticeable than others because of, for example,
their salient negative aect, such as the thought There is a monster in the cupboard. Children may then
come to realise that certain thoughts are less controllable than others when attempting to rid themselves of
the more unpleasant ones.
What research by Flavell and his colleagues suggests is that ones awareness that a thought is my
thought (qua authored by me) is in fact acquired. At an age when I am rst able to articulate my understanding of thoughts, my introspection is predominately content based. Later, as I become more (introspectively) aware, I show a greater understanding of the act of thinking itself, including the stream of
consciousness, cognitive cueing and the uncontrollability of unbidden thoughts. However, as noted earlier,
it is not clear whether the childs emerging awareness of the activity of thinking constitutes a uniform
awareness of ownership and authorship, or whether these two components are developmentally dierentiated. Despite this uncertainty, what appears to be borne out by the developing awareness of thinking in
young children is that a sense of authorship is acquired. As the dysfunction of this component is central
to Stephens and Grahams account, it is important to consider how this sense of authorship emerges.
Understanding the process of acquisition will, I suggest, help us evaluate theirs and other explanations
of thought insertion.
4. Acquiring an awareness of authorship
Wellman and Hickling (1994) distinguish between (i) the childs mentalistic theory of action, and (ii) her
theory of mind. A child who possesses a theory of action understands that actions can be determined by beliefs
and desires. Thus the child understands that her brother, for example, goes to the toy cupboard because he
wishes to play with his toys. Understanding of this kind, however, can occur in the absence of any subsequent
awareness of ones own mind as an active entity. Awareness of the mind as an independent locus of cognitive
process (p. 1565), Wellman and Hickling believe, develops over time. A child who possesses a mentalistic theory of action will understand that, in simple terms, her action stems from wishes and desires (etc.), even
though she may not be aware of the act of generating them when they occur. (Perhaps this constitutes a stage
prior to the development of Newen and Vogeleys meta-representations.) Nevertheless, when expressing such
mental states, either through language or action, the child will come to experience herself as agentic, as being
in control of her speech and behaviour.9
I have discussed how children use private speech as a tool to facilitate problem solving activities, and how
this private speech is eventually internalised. Could it be that as the child develops, and overt speech is
9

See Roessler and Eilan (2003) for a detailed discussion on this topic.

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

855

gradually internalised, the sense of agency experienced during the production of speech is maintained such
that the child not only comes to recognise the inner voice as thought but also experiences the thought as
self-generated? To reiterate, as an agent of action, the child expresses her beliefs and desires (psychological
states) as intentional action, in the form of behaviour or language, or both. Agency is experienced through
this overt expression and the child, according to Wellman and Hickling, understands the folk psychological
relation between psychological state and action, even if she does not (initially, at least) understand that her
mind has generated these psychological states. Agency is experienced not as isolated pockets of action,
but as continuous such that (ceteris paribus), at any given time, the subject experiences herself as the agent
of the action that she has just engaged in, is engaging in, and is about to engage in. There is a continuity
of her sense of agency across her action and language production. This same tripartite structure within her
experience of past, present and future action is retained as her sense of agency, which accompanies her outer
voice, is transformed into her inner voice. Thought, as I will discuss in Section 6, carries with it its own tripartite structure, the disruption of which, in terms of a specic component is claimed to explain, at least in
part, the phenomenon of thought insertion.
It is my contention, then, that the child recognises her inner voice as her own, and grows accustomed to the
(inner) dialogue that occurs during problem solving tasks. She becomes aware not only of these thoughts as
her own but, importantly, as thoughts she is generating. Likewise, as suggested by Flavell et al. (1993), during
quiet, inactive periods the child may reects on the events of the day, and may even experience unbidden
thoughts such as There is a monster in the cupboard. The semantic relatedness and general coherence of
inner speech, particularly when used as a tool to problem solve, aids the childs developing awareness of
her stream of consciousnessthat thoughts are connected, and one thought can cue another. Unbidden
thoughts that occasionally pop into the childs head, forming part of her experiential content, allow her
to contrast initiated thoughts with those that are less voluntary, each being useful in developing the childs
understanding of the power and limitation of her authorship.
As speculative as this account is, it does oer support for a particular explanation of thought insertion:
one that opposes important aspects of Stephens and Grahams position. To see how, I will discuss each in
turn.
5. Explanations of thought insertion 1: The importance of narrative structure
Thought insertion is characterised by negation and assertion. Typically, the subject does not simply deny
that a particular thought is hers (negation) but further asserts that it belongs to someone else (Spence, 2001). A
suitable account of thought insertion must not only explain why I might lack belief in my own authorship but
why authorship is then assigned to another agent (Pacherie, 2001).
Stephens and Graham (2000), argue that the denial and misattribution of authorship is determined by the
extent to which the putatively alien thought matches, or rather fails to match, the subjects background psychology of beliefs, desires and intentions.
[W]hether a person regards a thought (subjectively) in him as something he thinks. . . depends upon
whether he nds it explicable in terms of his conception of what he believes and desires (p. 165).
According to this view, the extent to which a thought ts a narrative structure is crucial to the attribution of
the thought to either oneself or another. Stephens and Grahams point is that even if I consider a thought to be
inconsistent with my own psychological background, if it manifests some level of coherence then it must
belong to, and stem from, someones psychological history. My attribution of authorship to myself depends
on whether I judge a thought to be congruent with my own intentional states. If a thought is explicable in
terms of my own narrative then I attribute authorship to myself. If it appears incongruent with my
beliefs and desires, although still coherent, its genesis is attributed to another. A point endorsed by Campbell
(1999):
What makes my occurrent thoughts mine is not just that they show up in my stream of consciousness.
What makes them mine is, in addition, the fact that they are the products of my long-standing beliefs
and desires. . . (p. 621).

856

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

For Stephens and Graham, delusional beliefs pertaining to inserted thoughts are seen as the product of a
purely reective and therefore retrospective process by which a thought is judged as either congruent or incongruent with ones self-narrative.10 This, according to Gerrans (2001), is too theory laden; too intellectualist.
Consequently, such an account does not seem to have the resources to explain the distinctive phenomenology
of deviant ownership [qua authorship] (p. 235). Similarly, for Gallagher (2003), Stephens and Grahams
account ignores the phenomenal experience characteristic of thought insertion: for the misattribution of
authorship is determined by theoretical mistakes at higher cognitive levels, to the eect that putatively alien
thoughts seem not to be my thoughts (authored by me) only after some reective verication process has
failed (p. 4). Such a reective and retrospective attribution of authorship would also seem to rule out the
possibility of the attribution occurring at the subpersonal level. Before discussing this point further, however,
let us rst consider the nature of the phenomenal experience underlying thought insertion, something Gerrans
and Gallagher accuse Stephens and Graham of neglecting. The importance of this experience, to the patient at
least, is evident in the description below:
[S]he said that sometimes it seemed to be her own thought. . . but I do not get the feeling that it is. She
said her own thoughts might say the same thing. . . but the feeling is not the same. . . the feeling is that it
is somebody elses. . . (Taken from Allison-Bolger, 1999, #68, cited in Hoerl, 2001, p. 190).
Here the patient acknowledges that the content of her thought may be the same during instances of thought
insertion, implying that this is not why the thought is judged to be alien; rather, the emphasis is on the way the
thought feels, irrespective of content. Therefore, in contrast to Stephens and Graham, a phenomenological
explanation (Maher, 1988) claims that the attribution of authorship is not based on the extent to which the
content of thought is judged to be congruent or incongruent with ones intentional narrative. Instead, authorship is inherent within the experience itself. Delusional beliefs are the product of higher-order attribution, as
the subject tries to articulate the genuine disturbance in her experience. Such an approach removes a great deal
of the intellectualness from the explanation, and switches the focus from the content of thought to the phenomenology of the experience. It might be said that the subject lives the experience of alien authorship instead
of merely deducing it through the process of reection.
Unfortunately, on its own, too much is required of our phenomenal experience for it is to provide an
exhaustive account of thought insertion. We know that those suering from putatively alien thoughts do more
than simply deny authorship; they attribute it to another agent. This means that patients who suer from a
delusional belief about inserted thoughts would literally have to possess an alien-thought feeling. But if this
were so, how would the patient be able to interpret this feeling correctly? Every case of thought insertion must
begin with a rst experience. Having never experienced the feeling that accompanies an inserted thought
before, by what means could the subject test the current feeling in order to verify the assertion that it is the
feeling one gets when the thought belongs to someone else?
Without wishing to deny the signicance of phenomenal experience to an explanation of thought insertion,
it should be evident that a subjects pathological experience of alien authorship (positive component) cannot
be explained solely by the absence of an awareness of oneself as the author of a particular thought (negative
component). Therefore, although I am sympathetic to the phenomenological approach, and accept that any
account proered to explain such delusional belief must incorporate the subjects phenomenal experience, I
nevertheless concede that we cannot give an exhaustive account of what is baing about delusions of alien
control by appeal to the anomalous character of the phenomenology which [these beliefs] aim to articulate
(Roessler, 2001, p. 178) (my italic).
The developmental research conducted by Flavell and his colleagues does seem to lend support to Stephens
and Grahams account. According to Flavell, awareness of the act of thinking is derived from the childs
awareness of the stream of consciousness and cognitive cueing. The child comes to understand that thought
content, more often than not, is semantically related, and that one thought typically cues another based on
some relevant association. In fact, the controllability and uncontrollability of thought, and the subsequent
10
It could also be argued that the subject has an aversion to these putatively alien thoughts because they are negative and perhaps
oensivenot the sort of thing the subject would typically think. However, often this is not the case. Such thoughts can be emotionally
neutral and mundane; some patients even report that they nd them comforting (Sims, 1988).

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

857

distinction between initiated and unbidden thought, is said to be linked to the relatedness of the content within
the stream of consciousness. Unbidden thoughts are experienced as popping into ones head because they are
unrelated to previous content. An awareness of authorship might be said, then, to be derived from an awareness of the content of thought and its relatedness to the psychological history of the individual, just as Stephens and Graham maintain.
Whilst this may be one way of interpreting the developmental ndings, and whilst I accept that content has
a role to play in explaining thought insertion, its semantic relatedness is not the key factor in the childs acquisition of a sense of authorship. I have argued that such awareness is acquired during the transformation of
outer speech to inner. The sense of agency that is acquired by the child during ostensive expressions of beliefs
and desires, of which speech is a part, is maintained when outer speech is transformed into inner speech. The
subject grows accustomed to the inner voice as thought she generates, in the same way as she comes to understand the agentic nature of her speech and action through their expression. So, just as there is something-it-islike to be an agent of action irrespective of the particulars of the action, so there is something-it-is-like to be
the author of thought irrespective of its content. Under this interpretation, content is incidental to the distinctive phenomenal experience that accompanies the childs act of generating thought.
Unlike Stephens and Graham, I wish to defend the role of phenomenal experience in the attribution of
authorship to self and, equally, its signicance in the denial of authorship in pathological cases. However,
unlike the phenomenological approach, and in keeping with Roesslers comment, I do not consider phenomenal experience alone to be capable of providing an exhaustive account of thought insertion. The generation of
thought carries with it a certain something-it-is-likeness that the child grows accustomed to, and is absent, I
suggest, in cases of thought insertion. Importantly, though, this absence is itself salient, for there is equally
something-it-is-like for the subject to experience the negation of authorship as there is its initiation.11 So,
rather than stemming from the total absence of phenomenal experience, in cases of thought insertion there
occurs importantly the replacement of one type of experience with another (the something-it-is-likeness of
authorship with the something-it-is-likeness of negation). It is this experience that grounds the delusional
belief, although on its own it is insucient to produce the full-blown pathological condition. What needs
to be outlined now is the nature of this experience, both in terms of normal and inserted thoughts.
6. Explanations of thought insertion 2: The importance of phenomenal experience
Shaun Gallagher believes that in many respects the claims made by patients suering from thought insertion are accurate (see Gallagher, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005). He accepts that it feels to the patient like she is not
the author of the thought. Therefore, unlike Stephens and Grahams account, in which such delusional assertions are seen as misattributions, for Gallagher, they reect what is actually being experienced by the subject.
Thus:
The schizophrenic does not discover alien thoughts by means of a meta-representational introspection;
rather he will have an immediate, non-observational sense that something is wrong, a sense that might in
fact motivate metarepresentations as a result (2000, p. 230).
Of central importance to Gallaghers account is Edmund Husserls analysis of consciousness and, in particular, his description of protention and retention (see Husserl, 1991). To explain: within my experience at t1 I
am not only aware of what I am thinking but, also, of what I have just been thinking. This, Husserl called
retention. My thought has an intrinsic sense of continuity. It does not consist of isolated content; rather, consciousness has an enduring quality (relatively speaking). In addition, Husserl identied protention as the act of
anticipation. My experience at t1 (my primary impression, to use Husserls terminology) contains not only my
awareness of the status of the object at t1 but, simultaneously, my awareness of the continuity between the
object and its prior status and an anticipation of its immediate future status. Protention directs towards the
future (Gallagher, 2000) and in doing so provides a sense of what I am about to do, the continuity of which
is derived from what I am doing and have already done.

11

For interesting discussions on the salient experience of negation in cases of delusional belief, see Ratclie (2004) and Young (2007).

858

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

My experience is therefore global in nature. It is based on a tripartite time structure incorporating past present and anticipated future events (Vogeley & Kupke, 2007). What it is not is a series of individuated, unconnected moments in time, or free-oating anonymity (Gallagher, 2000, p. 224). Moreover, for Husserl, I am
conscious (introspectively aware) of both the content of my (global) experience and of myself as the subject
who is conscious of it. Thus, I am simultaneously aware, in an immediate pre-reective sense, not only of
the continuity of my experience but that it is my experience. (Both Husserl and Gallagher appear to endorse
the inseparability thesis.) The sense I have of myself as the author of a thought is, according to Gallagher,
built into thinking itself (p. 225). Therefore, I do not need to establish authorship through a process of post
factum verication (p. 222). In other words, I do not need to establish the degree to which a thought ts my
own narrative in order to determine that I am its author (or not). Instead, the Husserlian process or mechanism for the production of thought carries within it a signal of authorship.
It seems feasible that protention and retention operate at a subpersonal, structural level but, equally, it is
evident that, for Gallagher, the nature of experience is such that this globalness, which is a product of these
underlying thought structures, is as much a part of what we are (introspectively) aware of as the content itself.
It is a fundamental property of the experience, so much so that as awareness of the activity of thinking develops, it does not constitute an awareness of isolated islands of thought but necessarily an awareness of the
stream of consciousness. Inherent within this stream of consciousness is a sense of ones authorship of
thought. For Gallagher, the distinctive phenomenology of thought insertionof a thought not feeling like
my thoughtis the result of protention failure. Without an anticipatory feature to my awareness at t1, continuing thoughts would seem to appear as if from nowhere. Such ready made thoughts, as they become a feature
of the retention phase, may reveal themselves to be coherent, but without protention lack the necessary sense
of authorship.
[In retention] I will experience what is actually my own thinking, as thinking that is not generated by me,
a thinking that is already made or pre-formed for me. It is only then that a meta-representational element
might be initiated by the patient, a reective introspection that is likely to become the hyperreection
characteristic of schizophrenic experience motivated by something gone wrong in the ow of consciousness (Gallagher, 2000, p. 228).
A failure of protention disruptions the phenomenal experience. This disruption becomes the object of
higher-order reective awareness or metarepresentation. The subject becomes reectively aware of the
thought; aware that it feels strange; odd; somehow not belonging. As a consequence, the patient denies that
the thought belongs to him. Why? Because that is what it feels like.
In the absence of awareness of ones stream of consciousness, as seems indicative of the preschooler, one
might speculate that the phenomenon of thought insertion could not manifest itself. Without an acquired
sense of authorship how is it possible to have a salient negation of authorship experience? Surely, it would
be nonsensical for us to maintain that a child could deny authorship based on the nature of her phenomenal
experience which, as a result of sporadic un- or underdeveloped meta-cognition (perhaps of the kind described
by Newen and Vogeley), lacks the what-it-is-likeness of authorship.
A lack of a sense of authorship (negative component) is not sucient to explain the assertion that the
thought belongs to another (positive component). To resolve this discrepancy, Gallagher (2003) speculates that, as a result of the schizophrenia, the higher-order processes necessary for reective analysis
gradually start to deteriorate. What once began as authentic reections on the subjects own phenomenal
experience transform over time into wildly delusional narratives (p. 8) which develop as the illness
progresses.
In sum, Gallaghers description (borrowed from Husserl) of the global nature of experience, centred on a
tripartite structure of continued experience, is certainly compatible with the characteristics of the stream of
consciousness. In fact, Gallagher provides further detail. Within any given experience there is an awareness
of what is and what has been, and the continuity between them. But in addition to this, and something that
is not altogether evident from earlier discussion on the stream of consciousness, there exists the awareness that
the experience will continue in an anticipated direction, or at least the anticipation that it will continue in some
indeterminate direction. All of this is captured within the experience itself, and all of this constitutes the ow

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

859

of experience (as Gallagher calls it).12 What the subject is struck by, in cases of thought insertion, is the
absence of this sense of anticipation. This absence, as already mentioned, is salient, for it amounts to the experience of ready-made thought that I, as subject, am not aware of initiating. I am therefore struck by the
absence of authorship.
Gallaghers account is compatible with patients who report that the putatively alien-thought feels dierent.
The emphasis here is on the experience of thinking rather than the content of thought. The sense of authorship
is disrupted irrespective of what is being thought about. However, I do not wish to create the impression that
content is irrelevant. Earlier I stated that it was incidental to the underlying phenomenology, and before that I
argued that a sense of authorship is something that the child acquires as a result of the transformation of outer
speech to inner. All of this I still maintain. However, I also wish to make clear that thought must be about
something; it must have content. For Gallaghers anticipatory quality of experience to have aect, there must
be coherence within the thought content.13 But ones awareness of the semantic relatedness of thought is, typically, a consequence of authorship rather than the means by which we authenticate it, as Stephens and Graham would have us believe. Under normal circumstances, underlying any thought content is a sense of
retention and protention captured within the global experience. This is the something-it-is-likeness that the
child becomes accustomed to during the development of inner speech.14
Retention and protention constitute the structure of experience which Gallagher attempts to ground in
some form of underlying neurophysiology, although the details of this need not concern us here. For he
accepts that, in cases of thought insertion, an understanding of the neurological disruption underlying the phenomenal experience and subsequent delusional belief formation is not fully understood. In recognising this,
however, Gallagher is prepared to speculate that some such process is involved in the generation of an experience that lacks a sense of authorship. I agree and, moreover, do some speculating of my own: that during the
transformation of outer speech with content x to inner speech, the voice that the child grows accustomed to,
only now with thought-content x, is experienced in the manner described by Husserl. In addition, the same
neurophysiological process which Gallagher suggests underlies the global experience, with its sense of continuation, plays a part in the childs awareness of authorship. This awareness, I have claimed, is acquired: for, as
stated earlier, just as the child comes to understand the agentic nature of her speech and action through its
expression, so authorship is acquired through the experience of protention within the global experience that
is the stream of consciousness. During the transformation of outer speech to inner, the thought, with content
that the child has grown accustomed to (qua the inner voice) is structured along Husserlian linesthere is
something-it-is-like to experience her thought qua her inner voice.
7. Conclusion
The phenomenon of thought insertion has been used to challenge or at least make us revise our understanding of subjective experience and the ownership of thought. It makes us reconsider the question What makes a
thought my thought? In response to this question, I have discussed in some detail Stephens and Grahams
incongruent-narrative view, in which the misattribution of thought to another occurs as the result of the
12
Actually, William James recognised that, within the stream of consciousness, what we call the present is an enduring present from
where we are able to glimpse, experientially speaking, both the past and the anticipated future. See Vogeley and Kupke (2007) for further
details and also for an interesting discussion on Husserls conception of time consciousness in relation to disturbances in the subjective
experience of time in patients suering from schizophrenia.
13
It is possible, of course, for an unanticipated thought to follow a particular train of thought within the stream of consciousness. In fact,
Gallagher is able to account for unbidden thought in exactly this way. To explain: protention provides, within my stream of consciousness,
an inherent sense of anticipation, even if what is being anticipated is indeterminate. With protention, what I expect is that something, even
something indeterminate, will follow. I may be surprised by what occurs. Surprised, that is, by the content, not by the fact that a thought
has occurred in the rst place; after all, I was expecting that. Unbidden thoughts may carry an element of surprise because of what the
thought is about; but, importantly, the subject does not have a not authored by me experience whenever such a thought occurs. Why?
Because within her stream of consciousness she is expecting thought of some description. If the subject experiences surprise, then it is at the
incongruent nature of the thought content with what has gone before, not at the occurrence of the thought itself.
14
As noted earlier, the phenomenal quality constitutive of a lack of protention can itself become the content of a meta-representation,
perhaps characteristic of hyper-reection, in which attention is focused on what the thought feels like rather than its content. I see this as a
challenge to Stephens and Grahams account.

860

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

subjects judgement that the putatively alien thought is incongruent with her own intentional narrative. I also
briey contrasted this view with a more bottom-up approach in which the claim that a thought belongs to
another is the direct result of some form of anomalous phenomenal experience. Both accounts, I suggest,
are problematic, either in their own right (as is the case with the phenomenological account) or because the
explanation seems incompatible with research evidence outlining the process by which a child develops an
awareness of thinking.
In contrast to Stephens and Graham, Gallagher argues that the delusional belief in inserted thoughts is
grounded in a salient Not authored by me experience that stems from (as yet unidentied) disruption in
the subjects underlying neurophysiology. The manner of this disruption stems from Husserls description
of conscious experience, as championed by Gallagher. It is my contention that this description provides the
components needed for the child to develop an awareness of authorship. Moreover, the acquisition of this
awareness takes place during the transformation of outer speech to inner, as the sense of agency associated
with ostensive speech acts and other behaviour is maintained: captured within the something-it-is-likeness
of thought qua inner speech. Importantly then, although Gallaghers account is incomplete, it is nevertheless
the explanation that best matches the manner in which the childs awareness of authorship of thought is
acquired. If it is compatible with developmental evidence identifying (even if indirectly) the manner in which
an awareness of authorship is acquired then it is reasonable, in my view, to proer it as the best explanation of
thought insertion to date. If not, then at least the importance of the role played by the subjects underlying
phenomenal experience, as identied by Gallagher, should be recognised by any future explanation.
I would like to nish by addressing a few points. First, I have neglected to discuss in any detail the higherorder dysfunction that Gallaghers account includes as part of his explanation of thought insertion, and which
dierentiate it from a purely phenomenological position. This is not because I do not consider it to be an
important and indeed necessary part of his or any explanation of thought insertion; rather, it is because I
do not consider it relevant to the question What makes a thought my thought? The developmental research
presented in this paper was used to discuss the issues of authorship which is negated in cases of thought insertion, and not the further claim that the thought is from another (alien) sourcealthough, of course, the two
components are an essential, dening, aspect of the pathology. Second, it has not been my aim to add anything
new to Gallaghers account. Instead, my aim has been merely to endorse Gallaghers position by demonstrating its compatibility with current research into the development of our awareness of thinking: a compatibility
that appears to be lacking in other accounts. Third, Husserls description of consciousness suggests that both
an awareness of ownership and authorship are presented simultaneously. My interest, throughout this paper,
has been in discussing the issue of authorship only, as this is argued by Stephens and Graham to be the dening problematic feature of thought insertion. I have suggested that, in terms of developmental research, it is
unclear whether an awareness of ownership develops independently of authorship. According to Husserl, and
therefore Gallagher, it does not. Whatever, the case may be, I do not believe it aects greatly the issue of ones
awareness of authorship. At present, then, I am reluctant to commit to any particular view on what I consider
to be a separate but related matter.
References
Allison-Bolger, V. Y. (1999). Collection of case histories. Unpublished typescript. In C. Hoerl, (2001). On thought insertion. Philosophy,
Psychiatry, and Psychology, 8(2-3), 189200.
Berk, L. E. (1994). Why children talk to themselves. Scientic American, 7883.
Bermudez, J. L. (1998). The paradox of self-consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bermudez, J. L., Marcel, A., & Eilan, N. (1995). The body and self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cahill, C., & Frith, C. D. (1996). False perceptions or false beliefs? Hallucinations and delusions in schizophrenia. In J. C. Marshall & P.
Halligan (Eds.), Case study in neuorpsychiatry. Hove: Erlbaum.
Campbell, J. (1999). Schizophrenia, the space of reasons, and thinking as a motor process. The Monist, 82, 609625.
Cohen, J. (1993). Childrens understanding of spontaneous cueing. Unpublished Honors Thesis, Stanford University, Department of
Psychology. In J.H. Flavell, F.L. Green and E.R. Flavell (1995). Young childrens knowledge about thinking. Monographs of the
Society for Research in Child Development, 60(1), serial no. 243 (pp. 1113).
Coliva, A. (2002). Thought insertion and immunity to error through misidentication. Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, 9(1), 2734.
Diaz, R. M., & Berk, L. E. (1992). Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Estes, D. (1998). Young childrens awareness of their mental activity: The case of mental rotation. Child Development, 69(5), 13451360.

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

861

Flavell, J. H. (1999). Cognitive development: Childrens knowledge about the mind. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 2145.
Flavell, J. H., & Flavell, E. R. (2004). Development of childrens intuitions about thoughtaction relations. Journal of Cognition and
Development, 5(4), 451460.
Flavell, J. H., Green, F. L., & Flavell, E. R. (1993). Childrens understanding of the stream of consciousness. Child Development, 64,
387398.
Flavell, J. H., Green, F. L., & Flavell, E. R. (1995). Young childrens knowledge about thinking. Monographs of the Society for Research in
Child Development, 60(1), 1113 (serial no. 243).
Flavell, J. H., Green, F. L., & Flavell, E. R. (1998). The mind has mind of its own: Developing knowledge about mental uncontrollability.
Cognitive Development, 13, 127138.
Flavell, J. H., Green, F. L., & Flavell, E. R. (2000). Development of childrens awareness of their own thoughts. Journal of Cognition and
Development, 1, 97112.
Flavell, J. H., Green, F. L., Flavell, E. R., & Grossman, J. B. (1997). The development of childrens knowledge about inner speech. Child
Development, 68(1), 3947.
Flavell, J. H., Green, F. L., Flavell, E. R., & Lin, N. T. (1999). Development of childrens knowledge about unconsciousness. Child
Development, 70(2), 396412.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1988). Identication and externality. In The importance of what we care about: Philosophical essays (pp. 5868).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frith, C. D. (1992). The cognitive neuropsychology of schizophrenia. Hove Erlbaum (UK): Taylor and Francis.
Fulford, K. W. M. (1995). Thought insertion, insight and Descartes cogito: linguistic analysis and the descriptive psychopathology of
schizophrenic thought disorder. In A. Sims (Ed.), Speech and language disorders. London: Gaskell Press for the Royal College of
Psychiatrists.
Gallagher, S. (2000). Self-reference and schizophrenia: A cognitive model of immunity to error through misidentication. In D. Zahavi
(Ed.), Exploring the self: Philosophical and psychopathological perspectives on self-experience (pp. 203239). Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Gallagher, S. (2003). Sense of agency and higher-order cognition: Levels of explanation for Schizophrenia. Cognitive Semiotics, 2, 113.
http://kl.upol.cz/hpo2003/gall03.html.
Gallagher, S. (2004). Neurocognitive models of schizophrenia: A neurophenomenological critique. Psychopathology, 37, 819. http://
pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~gallaghr/gall03Frith.html.
Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gerrans, P. (2001). Authorship and ownership of thoughts. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 8(2/3), 231237.
Gibbs, P. J. (2000). Thought insertion and the inseparability thesis. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 7(3), 195202.
Gordon, F. R., & Flavell, J. H. (1977). The development of intuitions about cognitive cueing. Child Development, 48, 10271033.
Harris, P. L. (1995a). Childrens awareness and lack of awareness of emotion. In D. Ciccetti & S. L. Toth (Eds.), Rochester symposium on
developmental psychopathology: Vol. VI. Emotion, cognition, representation (pp. 3557). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Harris, P. L. (1995b). The rise of introspection. Commentary in J.H. Flavell, F.L. Green and E.R. Flavell, Young childrens knowledge
about thinking. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 60(1), 243.
Hoerl, C. (2001). On thought insertion. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 8(2/3), 189200.
Husserl, E. (1991). On the phenomenology of consciousness of internal time (trans. J. Brough). collected works IV. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic.
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Holt.
Maher, B. A. (1988). Anomalous experience and delusional thinking: The logic of explanations. In T. F. Oltmanns & B. A. Maher (Eds.),
Delusional beliefs (pp. 1533). New York: Wiley and Sons.
Metzinger, T. (2003). Being no one. The self-model theory of subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83, 435450.
Newen, A., & Vogeley, K. (2003). Self-representation: Searching for a neural signature of self-consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition,
12, 529543.
Pacherie, E. (2001). Agency lost and found: Commentary on spence. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 8(2/3), 173176.
Parnas, J., & Sass, L. (2001). Self-solipsism, and schizophrenic delusions. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 8(2/3), 101120.
Ratclie, M. (2004). Interpreting delusions. Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, 3, 2548.
Roessler, J. (2001). Understanding delusions of alien control. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 8(2/3), 177187.
Roessler, J., & Eilan, N. (2003). Agency and self-awareness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schneider, K. (1959). Clinical psychopathology (trans. M.W. Hamilton). New York: Grune and Stratton.
Sims, A. (1988). Symptoms in the mind: An introduction to descriptive psychopathology. London: Baillie`re Tindall.
Spence, S. A. (2001). Alien control: From phenomenology to cognitive neurobiology. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 8(2/3),
163172.
Stephens, G. L. (2000). Thought insertion and subjectivity. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 7(3), 203205.
Stephens, G. L., & Graham, G. (1994). Self-consciousness, mental agency, and the clinical psychopathology of thought insertion.
Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 1, 110.
Stephens, G. L., & Graham, G. (2000). When self-consciousness breaks: Alien voices and inserted thoughts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Thornton, T. (2002). Thought insertion, cognitivism, and inner space. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 7(3), 237249.
Vogeley, K., & Kupke, C. (2007). Disturbances of time consciousness from a phenomenological and a neuroscientic perspective.
Schizophrenia Bulletin, 33(1), 157165.

862

G. Young / Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008) 848862

Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wellman, H. M., & Estes, D. (1986). Early understanding of mental entities: A reexamination of childhood realism. Child Development, 57,
910923.
Wellman, H. M., & Hickling, A. K. (1994). The minds I: Childrens conception of the mind as an active agent. Child Development, 65,
15641580.
Wilkerson, T. E. (1976). Kants critique of pure reason: A commentary for students. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Young, G. (2007). Restating the role of phenomenal experience in the formation and maintenance of the Capgras delusion.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, in press.