Harnessing the wandering mind: The role of perceptual load

Perceptual load is a key determinant of distraction by task-irrelevant stimuli (e.g., Lavie, N. (2005). Distracted and confused?: Selective attention under load. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 75-82). Here we establish the role of perceptual load in determining an internal form of distraction by task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs or “mind-wandering”).Four experiments demonstrated reduced frequency of TUTs with high compared to low perceptual load in a visual-search task. Alternative accounts in terms of increased demands on responses, verbal working memory or motivation were ruled out and clear effects of load were found for unintentional TUTs. Individual differences in load effects on internal (TUTs) and external (response-competition) distractors were correlated. These results suggest that exhausting attentional capacity in task-relevant processing under high perceptual load can reduce processing of task-irrelevant information from external and internal sources alike.     

Self-reflection and the temporal focus of the wandering mind

Current accounts suggest that self-referential thought serves a pivotal function in the human ability to simulate the future during mind-wandering. Using experience sampling, this hypothesis was tested in two studies that explored the extent to which self-reflection impacts both retrospection and prospection during mind-wandering. Study 1 demonstrated that a brief period of self-reflection yielded a prospective bias during mind-wandering such that participants’ engaged more frequently in spontaneous future than past thought. In Study 2, individual differences in the strength of self-referential thought — as indexed by the memorial advantage for self rather than other-encoded items — was shown to vary with future thinking during mind-wandering. Together these results confirm that self-reflection is a core component of future thinking during mind-wandering and provide novel evidence that a key function of the autobiographical memory system may be to mentally simulate events in the future.     

When attention matters: The curious incident of the wandering mind

Attention plays an essential role in the construction of the mental models necessary to make sense of ongoing events. In this article, we consider the implications of temporary inattention during reading for the construction and updating of the situation model during text comprehension. We examined how self-reported mind wandering during reading relates to the online construction of the situation model of the narrative, which in this case involved the pseudonym used by a villain in a detective novella. In successful readers, mind wandering without awareness, referred to as zoning out, was less frequent when the text revealed a clue about the villain's identity. Additional analyses indicated that mind wandering interfered with the construction of the situation model independent of the participants' ability to retrieve factual information. The analysis of the temporal consequences of zoning out indicated that lapses had the greatest influence when they occurred early in the narrative. These results confirm the intuition that zoning out during reading is an indication that the construction of the situation model has gone awry, and underscore the fact that our ability to understand ongoing events depends on the ability to pay attention when it matters.     

Mindfulness and mind wandering: The protective effects of brief meditation in anxious individuals

Mind wandering can be costly, especially when we are engaged in attentionally demanding tasks. Preliminary studies suggest that mindfulness can be a promising antidote for mind wandering, albeit the evidence is mixed. To better understand the exact impact of mindfulness on mind wandering, we had a sample of highly anxious undergraduate students complete a sustained-attention task during which off-task thoughts including mind wandering were assessed. Participants were randomly assigned to a meditation or control condition, after which the sustained-attention task was repeated. In general, our results indicate that mindfulness training may only have protective effects on mind wandering for anxious individuals. Meditation prevented the increase of mind wandering over time and ameliorated performance disruption during off-task episodes. In addition, we found that the meditation intervention appeared to promote a switch of attentional focus from the internal to present-moment external world, suggesting important implications for treating worrying in anxious populations.     

Interpretive sets, expectancy, fantasy proneness, and dissociation as predictors of hypnotic response.

College students with no prior experience of hypnosis were assessed for fantasy proneness and dissociation. In a totally separate context, they were subsequently tested for their interpretations of hypnotic suggestions, hypnotic response expectancies, and hypnotizability. Contrary to Spanos and Gorassini's (1984) hypothesis, strategic enactment of suggested responses was rarely reported, and its endorsement was not correlated with hypnotic responsiveness. Suggestibility was significantly predicted by fantasy proneness and response expectancy, but not by dissociation. A path analysis suggested that the relation between fantasy proneness and hypnotizability was partially mediated by expectancy.     

Contact high: Mania proneness and positive perception of emotional touches

How do extreme degrees of positive emotion-such as those characteristic of mania-influence emotion perception? The present study investigated how mania proneness, assessed using the Hypomanic Personality Scale, influences the perception of emotion via touch. Using a validated dyadic interaction paradigm for communicating emotion through touch (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006), participants (N=53) received eight different touches to their forearm from a stranger and then identified the emotion via forced-choice methodology. Mania proneness predicted increased overall accuracy in touch perception, particularly for positive emotion touches, as well as the over-attribution of positive and under-attribution of negative emotions across all touches. These findings highlight the effects of positive emotion extremes on the perception of emotion in social interactions.     

Teaching the history of medicine by case study and small group discussion

A case-study, small-group-discussion (“focal problem”) exercise in the history of medicine was designed, piloted, and evaluated in an overseas course and an on-campus elective course for medical students. Results suggest that this is a feasible approach to teaching history of medicine which can overcome some of the problems often encountered in teaching this subject in the medical curriculum.     

Absorbed in thought: the effect of mind wandering on the processing of relevant and irrelevant events

This study used event-related potentials to explore whether mind wandering (task-unrelated thought, or TUT) emerges through general problems in distraction, deficits of task-relevant processing (the executive-function view), or a general reduction in attention to external events regardless of their relevance (the decoupling hypothesis). Twenty-five participants performed a visual oddball task, in which they were required to differentiate between a rare target stimulus (to measure task-relevant processes), a rare novel stimulus (to measure distractor processing), and a frequent nontarget stimulus. TUT was measured immediately following task performance using a validated retrospective measure. High levels of TUT were associated with a reduction in cortical processing of task-relevant events and distractor stimuli. These data contradict the suggestion that mind wandering is associated with distraction problems or specific deficits in task-relevant processes. Instead, the data are consistent with the decoupling hypothesis: that TUT dampens the processing of sensory information irrespective of that information's task relevance.     

An alaryngeal stutterer: A case history

This case study describes an individual who as a stutterer underwent a total laryngectomy and right hemithyroidectomy. Following the Doehler method of esophageal voice training, the client continued to exhibit dysfluent speech behaviors. The Iowa “Stutterer's Self-Rating of Reactions to Speech Situations” and the “Checklist of Stuttering Behaviors” were used to ascertain whether the stuttering behaviors had changed and to what degree.     

The eyes know what you are thinking: eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering

Paralleling the recent work by Reichle, Reineberg, and Schooler (2010), we explore the use of eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering while participants performed a reading task. Participants were placed in a self-classified probe-caught mind wandering paradigm while their eye movements were recorded. They were randomly probed every 2–3 min and were required to indicate whether their mind had been wandering. The results show that eye movements were generally less complex when participants reported mind wandering episodes, with both duration and frequency of within-word regressions, for example, becoming significantly reduced. This is consistent with the theoretical claim that the cognitive processes that normally influence eye movements to enhance semantic processing during reading exert less control during mind wandering episodes.     

Aging ebbs the flow of thought: Adult age differences in mind wandering,executive control,and self-evaluation

Two experiments examined the relations among adult aging, mind wandering, and executive-task performance, following from surprising laboratory findings that older adults report fewer task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) than do younger adults (e.g., Giambra, 1989, Jackson and Balota, 2012). Because older adults may experience more ability- and performance-related worry during cognitive tasks in the laboratory, and because these evaluative thoughts (known as task-related interference, “TRI”) might be sometimes misclassified by subjects as task-related, we asked subjects to distinguish task-related thoughts from TRI and TUTs when probed during ongoing tasks. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults completed either a go/no-go or a vigilance version of a sustained attention to response task (SART). Older adults reported more TRI and fewer TUTs than did younger adults while also performing more accurately. In Experiment 2, subjects completed either a 1- or a 2-back version of the n-back task. Older adults again reported more TRI and fewer TUTs than younger adults in both versions, while performing better than younger adults in the 1-back and worse in the 2-back. Across experiments, older adults' reduced TUT rates were independent of performance relative to younger adults. And, although older adults consistently reported more TRI and less mind wandering than did younger adults, overall they reported more on-task thoughts. TRI cannot, therefore, account completely for prior reports of decreasing TUTs with aging. We discuss the implications of these results for various theoretical approaches to mind-wandering.     

A closer look at the relationship between the default network,mind wandering,negative mood,and depression

By a systematic analysis of the current literature on the neural correlates of mind wandering, that is, the default network (DN), and by shedding light on some determinative factors and conditions which affect the relationship between mind wandering and negative mood, we show that (1) mind wandering per se does not necessarily have a positive correlation with negative mood and, on the higher levels, depression. We propose that negative mood as a consequence of mind wandering generally depends on two determinative conditions, that is, whether mind wandering is with or without meta-awareness and whether mind wandering occurs during high or low vigilance states; (2) increased activity of the DN is not necessarily followed by an increase in unhappiness and depression. We argue that while in some kinds of meditation practices we witness an increase in the structure and in the activity of the DN, no increase in unhappiness and depression is observed.     

Counting the cost of an absent mind: Mind wandering as an underrecognized influence on educational performance

Successful learning requires that individuals integrate information from the external environment with their own internal representations. In this article, we consider the role that mind wandering plays in education. Mind wandering represents a state of decoupled attention because, instead of processing information from the external environment, our attention is directed toward our own private thoughts and feelings. In principle, because mind wandering is a state of decoupled attention, it represents a fundamental breakdown in the individual’s ability to attend (and therefore integrate) information from the external environment. We consider evidence that mind wandering impairs the encoding of information, leading to failures in building a propositional model of a sentence and, ultimately, impairing the building of a narrative model with sufficient detail to allow generating inferences. Next, because recognizing and correcting for mind wandering is a metacognitive skill, certain client groups, such as those suffering from dysphoria or attention deficit disorder, may be unable to correct for the deficits associated with mind wandering, and so may suffer greater negative consequences during education. Finally, we consider how to apply this research to educational settings.     

Sustained attention and the Type A behavior pattern: the effect of daydreaming on performance.

The present study examined the ability of Type A and Type B subjects to sustain attention during a 40-min visual vigilance task. It was predicted that Type A subjects would perform better than Type B subjects and that the performance of both groups would be related to the frequency of daydreams during the vigil. Type A subjects outperformed Type B subjects with regard to perceptual sensitivity (A') and number of signal detections. Although both groups reported an increase in the number of their daydreams as the vigil progressed, Type A subjects reported fewer daydreams during each period of watch than did Type B subjects. In addition, an inverse relationship was found between the number of signal detections and the frequency of daydreams.     

A case of premenstrual distress: bisexual determinants of a woman's fantasy of damage to her genital.

Case material is used to illustrate specific clinical application of the concept of primary femininity. Some contemporary contributions to the psychoanalytic theory of female psychosexual development are presented as complementary with, rather than contradictory to, more familiar, longstanding formulations that emphasize phallic strivings in women. In the clinical example reported, a fantasy of genital damage underlay a woman's premenstrual distress. Aspirations and concerns related to both aspects of her fundamental bisexuality participated in symptom formation and had to be investigated in order to achieve symptom relief. As the analytic work unfolded, it could be seen that the patient's awareness of her feminine aims served to keep her masculine aims out of awareness, and vice versa.     

Counselors and legislators: a case history

Recent Florida legislation provides for the training and use of paraprofessionals in guidance. The impetus for this legislation came from the legislators and vocational educators, rather than from the guidance profession. The official reasons given for the enactment of this legislation were especially critical of counselor education. The primary concern was that adequate vocational guidance is not being provided to youth in or out of school. This article discusses the preliminary hearings, content of the laws, and guidelines for implementing this legislation.