This paper presents a new theoretical framework for understanding the self-report process and, in particular, experience-sampling procedures. Early theoretical perspectives on self-reports conceived of experience-sampling procedures as the better measure of subjective experience compared to global and long-term retrospective questionnaires. More recent theoretical perspectives refined this view by suggesting that experience-sampling procedures measure a different type of knowledge for subjective experience (i.e., episodic knowledge rather than semantic knowledge). This paper extends this thinking by drawing on the latest advances in memory and consciousness research to suggest that experience-sampling procedures evoke a phenomenologically distinct state of conscious awareness in the respondent. In this new framework, experience-sampling procedures may serve as probes for autonoetic awareness , reflecting a highly personalized feeling of (re)experiencing oneself in the autobiographical past or present. The current investigation tested the implications and boundary conditions of this idea using a combined laboratory and computerized experience-sampling study (using PDAs). Part I tested the hypothesis that defensive processes, because they are known to affect autonoetic awareness as measured in the lab, should also affect reports made during experience-sampling in like fashion. The data supported the hypothesis. Individuals who scored higher on an interview measure of defense reported less negativity, showed less variability, and revealed greater discontinuities in the content of autonoetic awareness as measured during experience-sampling. Part II tested the hypothesis that experience-sampling procedures may not evoke autonoetic awareness for all individuals. As hypothesized, some individuals did not reflect on their experience in a highly personalized way during experience-sampling. Some people reported their semantic knowledge; others responded more behaviorally (i.e., implicitly) to the question prompts. Results from this study may provide better conceptual understanding of the meaning and use of experience-sampling procedures, especially as they relate to consciousness research.
