VERBALIZATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CUEING IN THOUGHT SUPPRESSION

Research on thought suppression has yielded a morass of conflicting re sults. While some studies show that suppression of a thought results i n a rebound effect (i.e. a heightened frequency of this thought later on), other studies failed to demonstrate this phenomenon. The first ai m of the present study was to investigate whether the method used to s tudy stream of consciousness (verbalization vs thinking silently) affe cts the report of target thoughts in a thought suppression experiment. Second, the claim that environmental cuing (i.e. distraction by direc ting attention towards external cues) is the mechanism behind the recu rrence of suppressed items was examined. Results indicated that the me thod used to monitor stream of consciousness did not modulate the repo rt of target thoughts: in fact, no rebound effect occurred. However, r esults did support the suggestion that heightened frequencies of suppr essed material are related to environmental cuing.