A practical use of "stream of conscious" would be design of user interface. Present user with an icon, ask him to either type a word/command or choose one from a dropdown list he thinks "associated" with the icon. For instance, when people see a printer icon, they usually think of "print" document.

Another use would be to measure "attention span." It could be more difficult because of the need to measure semantic proximity--by use of some thesaurus or algorithm. Simplity put, if the consecutive words are in close proximity, you will be plotting a series of near-zero on your graph. When attention breaks, you may observe a spike. The spacing between spikes measure attention span, which could be more quantitatively done by time series (or fourier) analysis.

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