The dynamics of affect across the wake-sleep cycle: From waking mind-wandering to night-time dreaming

Affective experiences occur across the wake-sleep cycle—from active wakefulness to resting wakefulness (i.e., mind-wandering) to sleep (i.e., dreaming). Yet, we know little about the dynamics of affect across these states. We compared the affective ratings of waking, mind-wandering, and dream episodes. Results showed that mind-wandering was more positively valenced than dreaming, and that both mind-wandering and dreaming were more negatively valenced than active wakefulness. We also compared participants’ self-ratings of affect with external ratings of affect (i.e., analysis of affect in verbal reports). With self-ratings all episodes were predominated by positive affect. However, the affective valence of reports changed from positively valenced waking reports to affectively balanced mind-wandering reports to negatively valenced dream reports. These findings show that (1) the positivity bias characteristic to waking experiences decreases across the wake-sleep continuum, and (2) conclusions regarding affective experiences depend on whether self-ratings or verbal reports describing these experiences are analysed.     

Relationships between mind-wandering and attentional control abilities in young adults and adolescents

Recent findings suggest that mind-wandering—the occurrence of thoughts that are both stimulus-independent and task-unrelated—corresponds to temporary failures in attentional control processes involved in maintaining constant task-focused attention. Studies supporting this proposal are, however, limited by a possible confound between mind-wandering episodes and other kinds of conscious experiences, such as external distractions (i.e., interoceptive sensations and exteroceptive perceptions). In the present study, we addressed this issue by examining, in adolescents and young adults, the relations between tasks measuring attentional control abilities and a measure of mind-wandering that is distinct from external distractions. We observed (1) that adolescents experienced more frequent external distractions, but not more mind-wandering, than young adults during the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) and (2) that, in young adults, the influence of external distractions on SART performance was fully accounted for by attentional control abilities, whereas mind-wandering was associated with decreases in SART performance above and beyond what was explained by attentional control abilities. These results show that mind-wandering cannot be entirely reduced to failures in the ability to maintain one's attention focused on task, and suggest that external distractions rather than mind-wandering are due to attentional control failures.     

Do drives drive the train of thought?—Effects of hunger and sexual arousal on mind-wandering behavior

Physiological needs that are currently unfulfilled are known to affect human cognition and behavior. The present study investigates whether and how the temporary activation of two primary physiological needs, namely hunger and sexual arousal, influence both the frequency and the contents of mind-wandering episodes. To induce hunger, one group of participants fasted for a minimum of five hours whereas another group of participants was exposed to audio material with explicit sexual content to provoke sexual arousal. Both groups as well as an additional control group, which had not received hunger instructions and had not been exposed to arousing material of any kind beforehand, performed a reading task during which mind wandering was assessed using a standard experience-sampling method. Results showed that acute hunger but not elevated sexual arousal renders the occurrence of mind-wandering episodes more likely. Induction of both hunger and sexual arousal rendered the occurrence of need-related off-task thoughts more likely and changed time orientations of mind wandering. The present findings are well in line with the assumption that unfulfilled needs regularly achieve cognitive priority and extend the cognitive-priority idea to self-generated thoughts.     

Mind-wandering and negative mood: Does one thing really lead to another?

Mind-wandering is closely connected with negative mood. Whether negative mood is a cause or consequence of mind-wandering remains an important, unresolved, issue. We sought to clarify the direction of this relationship by measuring mood before and after mind-wandering. We also measured the affective content, time-orientation and relevance of mind-wandering to current concerns to explore whether the link between mind-wandering and negative mood might be explained by these characteristics. A novel experience-sampling technique with smartphone application prompted participants to answer questions about mind-wandering and mood across 7 days. While sadness tended to precede mind-wandering, mind-wandering itself was not associated with later mood and only predicted feeling worse if its content was negative. We also found prior sadness predicted retrospective mind-wandering, and prior negative mood predicted mind-wandering to current concerns. Our findings provide new insight into how mood and mind-wandering relate but suggest mind-wandering is not inherently detrimental to well-being.     

Priming performance-related concerns induces task-related mind-wandering

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that priming of performance-related concerns would (1) increase the frequency of task-related mind-wandering (i.e., task-related interference; TRI) and (2) decrease task performance. In each experiment, sixty female participants completed an operation span task (OSPAN) containing thought content probes. The task was framed as a math task for those in a condition primed for math-related stereotype threat and as a memory task for those in a control condition. In both studies, women whose performance-related concerns were primed via stereotype threat reported more TRI than women in the control. The second experiment used a more challenging OSPAN task and stereotype primed women also had lower math accuracy than controls. These results support the “control failures × current concerns” framework of mind-wandering, which posits that the degree to which the environmental context triggers personal concerns influences both mind-wandering frequency and content.     

Attentional bias in euthymic bipolar I disorder

Little is known about the nature of the relation between information-processing biases and affective traits in bipolar disorder. The present study was designed to investigate whether attentional biases are evident in persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder when they are in a positive mood state, and whether biases are related to indices of emotion regulation and to prior history of mood episodes. Ninety adults diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and 81 controls with no lifetime mood disorder underwent a positive mood induction and then completed an emotion face dot-probe task; participants in the bipolar disorder group also completed a self-report measure of responses to positive affect. Attentional bias was not related to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or to symptom severity. Consistent with hypotheses, analyses within the bipolar group indicated that greater dampening of positive affect related to significantly less attention paid to the positively valenced faces. Discussion focuses on the potential role of affective traits in shaping attentional bias in bipolar disorder.     

Temperamental contributions to children's performance in an emotion-word processing task: a behavioral and electrophysiological study

Seven-year-old children (N=65) participating in a study of the influence of infant temperament on socioemotional development performed an auditory selective attention task involving words that varied in both affective (positive vs. negative) and social (social vs. nonsocial) content. Parent report of contemporaneous child temperament was also collected, and individual differences in self-regulation in the affective (soothability) and cognitive (attentional control) domains were noted. Overall, children showed slower responses to stimuli that were either social or negative in content, with the largest effect elicited by words that possessed both traits. Children rated high in soothability and attentional control showed slower responses to social negative words. The other children showed little to no differential response patterns across the word categories. ERPs collected during the task indicated that processing differences were evident in the later more cognitive components of the ERP, especially in children low in attentional control. These findings indicate that performance on an auditory selective attention task can assist in identifying underlying patterns of affective processing.     

The neurotic wandering mind: An individual differences investigation of neuroticism,mind-wandering,and executive control

Cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience have recently developed a keen interest in the phenomenon of mind-wandering. People mind-wander frequently, and mind-wandering is associated with decreased cognitive performance. But why do people mind-wander so much? Previous investigations have focused on cognitive abilities like working memory capacity and attention control. But an individual's tendency to worry, feel anxious, and entertain personal concerns also influences mind-wandering. The Control Failure?×?Concerns model of mind-wandering. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 188–197] argues that individual differences in the propensity to mind-wander are jointly determined by cognitive abilities and by the presence of personally salient concerns that intrude on task focus. In order to test this model, we investigated individual differences in mind-wandering, executive attention, and personality with a focus on neuroticism. The results showed that neurotic individuals tended to report more mind-wandering during cognitive tasks, lower working memory capacity, and poorer attention control. Thus the trait of neuroticism adds an additional source of variance in the tendency to mind-wander, which offers support for the Control Failure?×?Concerns model. The results help bridge the fields of clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, affective neuroscience, and cognitive neuroscience as a means of developing a more complete understanding of the complex relationship between cognition, personality, and emotion.     

Why does a red snake in the grass capture your attention?

It has been suggested that affective stimuli automatically capture attention; this preferential processing is thought to be related to the evolutionary significance of affective stimuli. However, recent evidence suggests that perceptual salience alone might explain why some affective stimuli are more likely to influence attentional processes in certain contexts. In this study, we manipulated affective and perceptual salience to better understand how affective information is processed and how it impacts attentional processes in different contexts. We used stimuli that are both affectively and perceptually salient, while varying the task requirement to encourage the processing of perceptually salient (Experiment 1) or affectively salient (Experiment 2) information. This design made it possible to observe independent and interdependent relationships between perceptual and affective salience. The results showed that when the task encouraged the processing of perceptually salient information, affective salience did not influence task performance. In contrast, when the task encouraged the processing of affectively salient information, affectively salient information impaired task performance. The findings suggest that the affective nature of the stimuli does not always influence attentional processes.     

Emotional valence of spoken words influences the spatial orienting of attention

The influence of the affective content of speech on the spatial orienting of auditory attention was examined by adapting the dot probe task. Two words, one of which was emotional in one quarter of the trials, were played simultaneously from a left- and a right-located loudspeaker, respectively, and followed (or not) by a lateralized beep to be detected (Experiments 1 and 2) or localized (Experiment 3). Taboo words induced attentional biases towards their spatial location in all experiments, as did negative words in Experiment 3, but not positive words. Thus, in audition, the identification of an emotional word automatically activates the information about its spatial origin. Moreover, for both word types, attentional biases were only observed when the emotional word was presented on the participant's right side, suggesting that the dominant left hemisphere processing of words constrains the occurrence of spatial congruency effects.     

Effects of induced and naturalistic mood on the temporal allocation of attention to emotional information

Building upon recent findings that affective states can influence the allocation of spatial attention, we investigate how state, trait and induced mood are related to the temporal allocation of attention to emotional information. In the present study, 125 unscreened undergraduates completed a modified rapid serial visual presentation task designed to assess the time course of attention to positive and negative information, comparing a neutral baseline mood induction to either a positive or negative mood induction. Induced negative mood facilitated attentional engagement to positive information while decreasing attentional engagement to negative information. Greater naturally occurring negative state mood was associated with faster or more efficient disengagement of attention from negative information in the presence of manipulated negative mood, relative to baseline. The engagement findings were inconsistent with our mood-congruence hypotheses and may be better explained by mood repair or affective counter-regulation theories. In contrast, the disengagement findings for state mood were somewhat consistent with our mood-congruence hypotheses. The relationship between mood and attention to emotional information may differ depending on the combination of attentional mechanism (engagement versus disengagement), aspect of mood (state, trait or induced), stimulus valence (positive versus negative) and timescale (early versus late) under investigation.     

Mind-wandering: phenomenology and function as assessed with a novel experience sampling method

Mind-wandering refers to the occurrence of thoughts whose content is both decoupled from stimuli present in the current environment and unrelated to the task being carried out at the moment of their occurrence. The core of this phenomenon is therefore stimulus-independent and task-unrelated thoughts (SITUTs). In the present study, we designed a novel experience sampling method which permitted to isolate SITUTs from other kinds of distractions (i.e., irrelevant interoceptive/exteroceptive sensory perceptions and interfering thoughts related to the appraisal of the current task). In Experiment 1, we examined the impact of SITUTs on the performance of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; a Go/No-Go task). Analyses demonstrated that SITUTs impair SART performance to the same extent as irrelevant sensory perceptions. In Experiment 2, we further examined SITUTs in order to assess the possible functions of mind-wandering. We observed that the content of most of reported SITUTs refers to the anticipation and planning of future events. Furthermore, this “prospective bias” was increased when participants' attention had been oriented toward their personal goals before performing the SART. These data support the view that an important function of mind-wandering relates to the anticipation and planning of the future.     

The daydreamer: Exploring the personality underpinnings of daydreaming styles and their implications for well-being

In the present research, we looked at how positive-constructive daydreaming, guilty-dysphoric daydreaming, and poor attentional control associate with both broad (i.e., openness to experience) and specific (i.e., introspection) personality traits. A second aim was to determine how daydreaming styles were associated with psychological well-being. Across four studies, 1081 undergraduate (studies 1, 2, and 4) and MTurk (study 3) participants completed online questionnaires. A fixed-effect meta-analysis revealed that introspection was a significant predictor of both positive and negative daydreaming styles, but not a consistent predictor of poor attentional control. Positive-constructive daydreaming was more strongly associated with personal growth, purpose in life, and positive affect; guilty-dysphoric daydreaming was associated with depressive symptoms, negative affect, and lower psychological well-being, while poor attentional control was associated with lower positive well-being. Although correlational, these results demonstrate the usefulness of examining the experience and content of recurrent daydreaming and mind-wandering styles to further understand well-being.     

Anatomy of an error: A bidirectional state model of task engagement/disengagement and attention-related errors

We present arguments and evidence for a three-state attentional model of task engagement/disengagement. The model postulates three states of mind-wandering: occurrent task inattention, generic task inattention, and response disengagement. We hypothesize that all three states are both causes and consequences of task performance outcomes and apply across a variety of experimental and real-world tasks. We apply this model to the analysis of a widely used GO/NOGO task, the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). We identify three performance characteristics of the SART that map onto the three states of the model: RT variability, anticipations, and omissions. Predictions based on the model are tested, and largely corroborated, via regression and lag-sequential analyses of both successful and unsuccessful withholding on NOGO trials as well as self-reported mind-wandering and everyday cognitive errors. The results revealed theoretically consistent temporal associations among the state indicators and between these and SART errors as well as with self-report measures. Lag analysis was consistent with the hypotheses that temporal transitions among states are often extremely abrupt and that the association between mind-wandering and performance is bidirectional. The bidirectional effects suggest that errors constitute important occasions for reactive mind-wandering. The model also enables concrete phenomenological, behavioral, and physiological predictions for future research.     

Regulatory focus and affective recall

In two studies, we tested the impact of regulatory focus on recalled affect for past academic outcomes. Because promotion focus concerns achieving gains, it should be related to greater recalled positive affect. In contrast, prevention focus concerns avoiding losses, and should be related to greater recalled negative affect. In Study 1, promotion focus led to greater recalled positive affect for positive events, while prevention focus led to greater recalled negative affect regardless of event valence. In Study 2, promotion focus increased recalled positive affect for both positive and negative events, whereas prevention focus increased recalled negative affect for both positive and negative events. These studies demonstrate that current motivation can alter memory for past affective experiences; the regulatory focus ascribed to a previous event changes the extent to which people remember their emotional experience. Implications are discussed.     

The affective regulation of cognitive priming

Semantic and affective priming are classic effects observed in cognitive and social psychology, respectively. The authors discovered that affect regulates such priming effects. In Experiment 1, positive and negative moods were induced before one of three priming tasks; evaluation, categorization, or lexical decision. As predicted, positive affect led to both affective priming (evaluation task) and semantic priming (category and lexical decision tasks). However, negative affect inhibited such effects. In Experiment 2, participants in their natural affective state completed the same priming tasks as in Experiment 1. As expected, affective priming (evaluation task) and category priming (categorization and lexical decision tasks) were observed in such resting affective states. Hence, the authors conclude that negative affect inhibits semantic and affective priming. These results support recent theoretical models, which suggest that positive affect promotes associations among strong and weak concepts, and that negative affect impairs such associations (Clore & Storbeck, 2006; Kuhl, 2000).     

Cognitive and affective predictors of boredom proneness

Boredom proneness has been linked to various forms of cognitive and affective dysregulation including poor self-control and mind-wandering (MW), as well as depression and aggression. As such, understanding boredom and the associated cognitive and affective components of the experience, represents an important first step in combatting the consequences of boredom for psychological well-being. We surveyed 1928 undergraduate students on measures of boredom proneness, self-control, MW, depression and aggression to investigate how these constructs were related. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that self-control operated as a strong negative predictor of boredom proneness. Finally, when controlling for age and self-control, we observed large decreases in the magnitudes of the relationships between boredom proneness and our other measures of interest. Together, these results imply a strong relationship between boredom proneness and cognitive and affective dysregulation, and show that individual levels of self-control can account for the lion’s share of variance in the relationships between boredom, cognition, and affect.     

Mind-wandering in younger and older adults: converging evidence from the Sustained Attention to Response Task and reading for comprehension

One mechanism that has been hypothesized to contribute to older adults' changes in cognitive performance is goal neglect or impairment in maintaining task set across time. Mind-wandering and task-unrelated thought may underlie these potential age-related changes. The present study investigated age-related changes in mind-wandering in three different versions of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), along with self-reported mind-wandering during a reading for comprehension task. In the SART, both younger and older adults produced similar levels of faster reaction times before No-Go errors of commission, whereas, older adults produced disproportionate post-error slowing. Subjective self-reports of mind-wandering recorded during the SART and the reading task indicated that older adults were less likely to report mind-wandering than younger adults. Discussion focuses on cognitive and motivational mechanisms that may account for older adults' relatively low levels of reported mind-wandering.     

Effects of social and affective content on exogenous attention as revealed by event-related potentials

The social content of affective stimuli has been proposed as having an influence on cognitive processing and behaviour. This research was aimed, therefore, at studying whether automatic exogenous attention demanded by affective pictures was related to their social value. We hypothesised that affective social pictures would capture attention to a greater extent than non-social affective stimuli. For this purpose, we recorded event-related potentials in a sample of 24 participants engaged in a digit categorisation task. Distracters were affective pictures varying in social content, in addition to affective valence and arousal, which appeared in the background during the task. Our data revealed that pictures depicting high social content captured greater automatic attention than other pictures, as reflected by the greater amplitude and shorter latency of anterior P2, and anterior and posterior N2 components of the ERPs. In addition, social content also provoked greater allocation of processing resources as manifested by P3 amplitude, likely related to the high arousal they elicited. These results extend data from previous research by showing the relevance of the social value of the affective stimuli on automatic attentional processing.     

Drifting from slow to "D'oh!": working memory capacity and mind wandering predict extreme reaction times and executive control errors

A combined experimental, individual-differences, and thought-sampling study tested the predictions of executive attention (e.g., Engle & Kane, 2004) and coordinative binding (e.g., Oberauer, Süβ, Wilhelm, & Sander, 2007) theories of working memory capacity (WMC). We assessed 288 subjects' WMC and their performance and mind-wandering rates during a sustained-attention task; subjects completed either a go/no-go version requiring executive control over habit or a vigilance version that did not. We further combined the data with those from McVay and Kane (2009) to (1) gauge the contributions of WMC and attentional lapses to the worst performance rule and the tail, or τ parameter, of reaction time (RT) distributions; (2) assess which parameters from a quantitative evidence-accumulation RT model were predicted by WMC and mind-wandering reports; and (3) consider intrasubject RT patterns--particularly, speeding--as potential objective markers of mind wandering. We found that WMC predicted action and thought control in only some conditions, that attentional lapses (indicated by task-unrelated-thought reports and drift-rate variability in evidence accumulation) contributed to τ, performance accuracy, and WMC's association with them and that mind-wandering experiences were not predicted by trial-to-trial RT changes, and so they cannot always be inferred from objective performance measures.