The interaction between thought and environmental stimulation: Revisiting the theory of thought with images and without images

The present article reports the results of a descriptive-correlational study that tried to return to the theory of thought with images and without images with the objective of exploring the relevance of environmental stimulation in its elicitation. The purpose of this work was to explore whether environmental stimulation influences the forms of symbolic nature of thought (images and without images) or, even if, the iconic nature of thought is independent of environmental stimulation. Fifty university students participated, who were individually subjected to two thought elicitation events: an instrumental music and a story. After each stimulus, a video-assisted qualitative interview was carried out with the objective of monitoring the thoughts of the participants. The categories of thought were codified and analyzed through a descriptive statistical analysis, Z test for the comparison of proportions and a Bayesian analysis (BF). The results show that the nature of the stimulus does not determine the emergence of one type of thinking over another; however, when stratifying by sex, differences appear. It is concluded that the denotative and imaginative thinking fluctuates permanently in the experience, independent of the environmental stimulation. The emergence of a thought in images and without images does not depend on the characteristics of the social and cultural context, but on what these stimuli remove in the individual consciousness, so it is possible to think that thought transits by different forms of expression, according to the interaction between environmental stimulation and the internal motivations of human consciousness.