The Mind Wanders

The persistence of thought: evidence for a role of working memory in the maintenance of the daydreaming state

themindwanders — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 12:18:37 +0000

Understanding the process by which the mind generates and sustain the mental content when the mind wanders is one of the most important questions in understanding the phenomena. One view on how this process occurs is that the experiences are supported by the process of working memory: our mental capacity to sustain and buffer information in a mental workspace. Support for this perspective comes from two experimental papers published this year. Along with colleagues in the University of Wisconsin, we demonstrated that higher capacity for working memory was positively associated with greater off-task thought. This association was only observed in easy task (such as simple choice reaction time or breath counting) suggesting that when performing simple tasks that do not engage all of our mental resources, we use our idle working memory capacity to support and maintain the internal train of thought that forms the mental content of our daydreams. This research was published this week in the journal Psychological Science.

In a second study conducted with colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, we investigated how this process relates to the content of off task episodes. In this experiment published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition we demonstrated that the same measure of working memory capacity was predictive of off task thoughts about the future but not about the past. Further analysis indicated that the content of these thoughts took the form of autobiographical plans that the individuals have about upcoming events, such as going to the gym or romantic dates. This result suggests that the motivation for using working memory to support daydreaming or mind-wandering maybe to make progress on the pressing goals that form the backdrop of our lives.

Together these experiments suggest that the process of working memory helps support the mental content that our minds generate when we daydream. Moreover, when we are engaged on an undemanding task (such as washing the dishes or riding on the bus) we use these idle resources in attempts to make progress in the problems and concerns that we all have as we navigate through daily life. Whether using working memory in this fashion is necessarily the best tactic for a healthy balanced life remains to be seen. However, as the capacity for working memory is important in educational achievement and predicts success in the workplace, the association with mind-wandering implies that daydreaming in non-demanding tasks is a part of the mental life of those people who tend to be successful in modern life.

Escaping the here and now: future thinking as self projection during the mind wandering state

themindwanders — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:26:30 +0000

One observation from the last decade in both cognitive science and neuroscience is that prospection (the ability to think about the future) is important for humans because it allows the mind to prepare for events that may occur in the future. While this has largely been studied in explicit goal directed future thinking in the laboratory, in the last few months studies have begun to explore how such prospection operates during mind wandering; at the heart of the capacity to think about the future is the capacity for self or autobiographical memory. In one study published in a journal called Acta Psychologia, Stawarcyzk and colleagues demonstrated that Belgian participants tend to think more about the future during mind wandering if they were primed with a list of their personal goals prior to performing a simple task. In a similar vein, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, we demonstrated that this prospective bias arises because of the saliency of self referent information. In our studies (published in a journal called Consciousness and Cognition) participants were more likely to think about their personal futures during mind wandering (rather than past) if they were asked to rate as set of adjectives applied to themselves, rather than to either their best friend or the current UK prime minister or to a control group. In a second study, participants who engaged in the most future thinking during mind wandering showed the strongest memory for self rated adjectives. Together these two different studies demonstrate that autobiographical memory is at the heart of the capacity to mentally escape the here and now and engage in future thinking during the mind wandering state.

Absorbed in Thought NOT Simply Distracted

themindwanders — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 11:09:37 +0000

A couple of weeks ago in the journal Psychological Science, collaborators of mine from Nothumbria University published a study that looked at the reason why mind-wandering is associated with reduced processing of task relevant information. Using, EEG we measured the cortical response to events in a task. In this experiment we were especially interested in the brains response to distractor stimuli, because we wanted to assess whether people who mind wander are easily distracted. Our study showed the people who reported the most off task thoughts tended to show the smallest response to both the targets in the task and to the distracters. Thus while mind-wandering is associated with poor performance on task, this is independent of a process of external distraction. This result is important because it shows that the experience of mind wandering is not simply a state of poor attentional control, because the people who did the most mind wandering were also able to ignore the distracters in a sustained attention task. Rather than simply being a state of distraction, this study suggests that one reason why the mind neglects external information is because when it daydreams, the brain needs to filter out perceptual information, so as to allow it to concentrate on an internal train of thought. Failing to attend to perceptual information during idle moments is probably one important reason why we are able to concentrate on other more important personal goals, such as what to have on a dinner date or where to go on vacation. Rather than being a problem, being absent from the here and now when the conditions allow, may actually facilitate focus on the other problems that occupy our daily lives.

Imprisoned by the past: unhappy moods wander to their past

themindwanders — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:43:49 +0000

This week the journal Cognition and Emotion published a study by my colleague Rory O’Connor (Stirling University) and myself exploring the relationship between different mood states and the temporal focus that mind wandering tasks. The results suggested that being in a negative mood led people to mind wander to events in the past. This bias was especially pronounced in people with depression.

The minds eye

themindwanders — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 13:57:17 +0000

The current issue of PLOS One includes a recent paper by myself and my co-authors from UCSB which demonstrates that situations under which mind wandering is likely to occur are associated with increases in pupil diameter (see http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018298). These changes are distinct from the changes that take place when the mind processes external information. This study suggests that pupilometry maybe a useful covert marker for internal focus and provides further evidence that internally maintained thoughts (such as mind wandering or daydreaming) are often associated with a state of increased arousal (such as strong emotion or important personal concerns).

Unhappy wanderings: further evidence of a link between mind-wandering and negative affect

themindwanders — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:31:47 +0000

Once again, mind-wandering has made headlines. A study by Killingsworth and Gilbert published in the journal Science has shown that one important consequence of mind-wandering is that when it happens people are usually unhappy. This study complements previous studies that have shown links with chronic low mood and experimentally induced mood in the lab (see the section on mood in Experimental Articles for examples). While conclusions about whether mind-wandering causes low mood or vice versa remain an open question, the study does underline how mind-wandering is strongly linked to states of negative affect.

For discussions of this in the popular press see:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/11/daydreaming-is-a-downer.html?rss=1

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19715-iphone-app-reveals-the-emotional-downside-of-daydreams.html)

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themindwanders — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:33:46 +0000

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