Inner experience is widely accepted by psychologists and lay people as being straightforwardly observable: Inner speech, visual images, feelings, and so on are understood to be directly apprehendable “before the footlights of consciousness.” Many psychologists hold that such characteristics of inner experience play substantial theoretical roles and have applied significance across a wide range of cognitive, affective, performance, and clinical situations. If so, the frequency of occurrence of these characteristics is of fundamental importance. Such frequencies are usually estimated by questionnaires or by questionnaire-based experience sampling. However, there are reasons to wonder about the accuracy of such questionnaire-based estimates. We present three studies that compared, head-to-head, questionnaire-based experiential frequencies with frequencies discovered using descriptive experience sampling (DES), a method for random sampling in the natural environment that aspires to apprehend inner experience with as high fidelity as the state of the art allows. Together, they suggest that estimates of inner-experience frequency produced by questionnaires and DES are irreconcilably discrepant: Questionnaire-based methods produced dramatically higher (from 2 to 4 times as high) frequencies than did DES. These results suggest caution when interpreting questionnaire-based experiential results and the importance of additional high-fidelity studies of inner experience.

内心体验被心理学家和外行人广泛接受为可以直接观察到的：内心的言语、视觉图像、感觉等被理解为“在意识的脚灯之前”可以直接理解。许多心理学家认为，内在体验的这些特征在理论方面发挥着重要作用，并在广泛的认知、情感、表现和临床情况中具有应用意义。如果是这样，这些特征的出现频率就至关重要。这种频率通常通过问卷或基于问卷的经验抽样来估计。然而，有理由怀疑这种基于问卷的估计的准确性。我们提出了三项研究，它们直接比较，基于问卷的经验频率，使用描述性经验抽样 (DES) 发现频率，这是一种在自然环境中进行随机抽样的方法，旨在以现有技术允许的最高保真度来理解内心体验。总之，他们认为问卷和 DES 产生的内在体验频率的估计是不可调和的：基于问卷的方法产生的频率比 DES 高得多（从 2 到 4 倍高）。这些结果表明在解释基于问卷的体验结果时要谨慎，以及对内部体验进行额外的高保真研究的重要性。一种在自然环境中随机抽样的方法，它渴望以最先进的技术所允许的最高保真度来理解内心体验。总之，他们认为问卷和 DES 产生的内在体验频率的估计是不可调和的：基于问卷的方法产生的频率比 DES 高得多（从 2 到 4 倍高）。这些结果表明在解释基于问卷的体验结果时要谨慎，以及对内部体验进行额外的高保真研究的重要性。一种在自然环境中随机抽样的方法，它渴望以最先进的技术所允许的最高保真度来理解内心体验。总之，他们认为问卷和 DES 产生的内在体验频率的估计是不可调和的：基于问卷的方法产生的频率比 DES 高得多（从 2 到 4 倍高）。这些结果表明在解释基于问卷的体验结果时要谨慎，以及对内部体验进行额外的高保真研究的重要性。