Verbalization and environmental cuing in thought suppression

Research on thought suppression has yielded a morass of conflicting results. While some studies show that suppression of a thought results in a rebound effect (i.e. a heightened frequency of this thought later on), other studies failed to demonstrate this phenomenon. The first aim of the present study was to investigate whether the method used to study stream of consciousness (verbalization vs thinking silently) affects the report of target thoughts in a thought suppression experiment. Second, the claim that environmental cuing (i.e. distraction by directing attention towards external cues) is the mechanism behind the recurrence of suppressed items was examined. Results indicated that the method used to monitor stream of consciousness did not modulate the report of target thoughts: in fact, no rebound effect occurred. However, results did support the suggestion that heightened frequencies of suppressed material are related to environmental cuing.