Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25, No. 3–4, 2018, pp. 29–54 Vincent P. Brouwers, 1 Christopher L. Heavey, 1 Leiszle Lapping-Carr, 1 Stefanie A. Moynihan, 1 Jason M. Kelsey 1 and Russell T. Hurlburt 1 Pristine Inner Experience While Silent Reading It’s Not Silent Speaking of the Text Abstract: We used Descriptive Experience Sampling to explore the pristine inner experience of 16 college students while reading Fitzgerald and Hemingway short stories. We provide rich descriptions of the phenomena while reading. Visual imagery was frequent. Although many theorists presume the ubiquitous presence of an inner voice that narrates the text as it is read, we found that only about 3% of samples involved such inner narration. Words were experienced during about a quarter of all samples, including: a focus on specific words from the text (but which were not merely inner reading), words innerly spoken in response to the text (content was related to the text but not of the text itself), and innerly spoken unrelated words (appa- rently not connected to the text). We suggest that presuppositions account for others’ overestimation of silent speech frequency, and discuss the impact of these findings on understanding reading and consciousness science. 1 Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy, Box 455030, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5030, USA. Correspondence: Email: vince.brouwers31@gmail.com Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2019 For personal use only -- not for reproduction