Attention need not always apply: Mind wandering impedes explicit but not implicit sequence learning

Brosowsky, Nicholaus P.; Murray, Samuel; Schooler, Jonathan W.; Seli, Paul

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104530

Cited by 30 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Similarly, it remains unclear how motivation might be able to shield task performance from the negative effects of mind wandering. One possibility is that motivation facilitates participants’ automatization of the primary task, freeing up resources for mind wandering, while reducing the negative impact on of mind wandering on performance (Brosowsky, Murray, Schooler, & Seli, 2020; Esterman, Noonan, Rosenberg, & DeGutis, 2013; Esterman & Rothlein, 2019; Mason et al, 2007; Teasdale et al, 1995; see also, Moors & De Houwer, 2006). Alternatively, motivation may influence cognitive flexibility (Braem & Egner, 2018; Diamond, 2013), task monitoring, or proactive control (Botvinick & Braver, 2015; Esterman, Poole, Liu, & DeGutis, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mind wandering, motivation, and task performance over time: Evidence that motivation insulates people from the negative effects of mind wandering.

Brosowsky

DeGutis

Esterman

et al. 2023

Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice

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In the current study, we examined whether participant motivation was associated with fluctuations of attentional engagement and performance over time. We gauged participants' motivation and depth of mind wandering as they completed the metronome response task to determine whether fluctuations in inattention (indexed by task performance and depth of mind wandering) would be related to fluctuations in motivation. As in prior work, we found that, with increasing time on task, (a) self-reported depth of mind wandering increased, (b) task performance decreased, and (c) motivation waned. Extending this work, we found an interaction between motivation and mind wandering such that mind wandering was negatively associated with task performance when motivation was low, but unrelated to performance when motivation was high. These results suggest that motivation may help improve task performance by reducing the depth of mind wandering, while also providing insulation from the negative effects of mind wandering, when it does occur.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mind wandering, motivation, and task performance over time: Evidence that motivation insulates people from the negative effects of mind wandering.

Brosowsky

DeGutis

Esterman

et al. 2023

Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice

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“…From a methodological perspective, it is important to understand whether (and how) we can experimentally manipulate various dimensions of mind wandering, including thought constraint. Indeed, research on task-unrelated thought frequently employs task-demand manipulations, and these have contributed significantly to our understanding of (a) the costs of mind wandering and (Brosowsky et al, 2021; b) how mind wandering responds to environmental changes (Randall et al, 2014). For instance, task-demand manipulations have been used to examine the effect of different rates of task-unrelated thought on reading comprehension (Forrin et al, 2019), visual processing (Smallwood et al, 2007), driving (Yanko & Spalek, 2014), and even whether people understand jokes (Zhang et al, 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…From a theoretical perspective, it is also important to understand the influence of task demand on thought constraint, since doing so could allow researchers to generate numerous testable hypotheses that could help to elucidate the nature of unconstrained thoughts. For instance, one prominent view in the mind-wandering literature is that engaging in task-unrelated thought requires executive resources (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006) and, consequently, task-demand effects are explained in terms of the availability of resources (Brosowsky et al, 2021). Under this view, the maintenance, updating, and manipulation of information in working memory depends on a limited pool of resources, which depletes and replenishes over time (e.g., Popov & Reder, 2020; see also, Oberauer et al, 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

Thought dynamics under task demands: Evaluating the influence of task difficulty on unconstrained thought.

Brosowsky

Murray

Schooler

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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As research on mind wandering has accelerated, the construct's defining features have expanded and researchers have begun to examine different dimensions of mind wandering. Recently, Christoff and colleagues have argued for the importance of investigating a hitherto neglected variety of mind wandering: "unconstrained thought," or, thought that is relatively unguided by executive-control processes. To date, with only a few studies investigating unconstrained thought, little is known about this intriguing type of mind wandering. Across 2 experiments, we examined, for the first time, whether changes in task demand influence rates of constrained versus unconstrained thoughts. In both experiments, participants completed either an easy (0-back) or hard (2-back) task and responded to intermittently presented thought probes that gauged thought constraint throughout the task. In Experiment 1, we found that participants completing the easy task engaged in unconstrained thoughts more frequently than those completing the difficult task. In Experiment 2, we replicated this result and further demonstrated manipulations of unconstrained thought while also measuring task-relatedness (a common dimension of mind wandering). Finally, exploratory analyses showed associations between constrained thought and age, verbal intelligence, and an assessment of flow ('deep effortless concentration'), thereby adding further evidence to indicate a dissociation between taskrelatedness and constraint. We discuss the methodological and theoretical applications of our findings to the burgeoning field of research on unconstrained thought. All data, analysis, article, and experiment code can be found at https://osf.io/wr2vk/ Public Significance StatementIn the current study, we established that task difficulty can be used to effectively manipulate rates of thought constraint. This study provides novel evidence that when resources are limited, participants engage in less unconstrained thought. These important theoretical contributions further refine thought constraint as a construct within the Dynamic Framework and narrow the candidate processes underlying (un)constrained thought.

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“…Although the current task was challenging in terms of its fine motor demands, it could be that it is more similar to the typical sustained attention and vigilance tasks used to study mind wandering than to the task used by Boyd and Winstein (2004) and Boyd and Linsdell (2009). As such, the task's monotony allowed little room for learning, as there was nothing to learn beyond the monotonous tracking of the ball bouncing on the screen and clicking on it during rare occasions when it became red (Brosowsky et al, 2021). Alternatively, it may be that learning would take place if this task was performed across various days as in Boyd and Winstein (2004) and Boyd and Linsdell (2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This allows for executive resources to be freed up for mind wandering (Risko et al, 2012). Mind wandering then potentially increases because of understimulation, leading to low levels of arousal as a consequence of the task's monotony (Brosowsky et al, 2021).…”

Section: Mind Wandering Under Different Task Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Straying Off Course: The Negative Impact of Mind Wandering on Fine Motor Movements

Silva

Postma

2021

Journal of Motor Behavior

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The goal of this study was to examine how various degrees of perceptual decoupling during mind wandering affect fine motor control. We hypothesized that while under normal circumstances attention ensures an optimal control strategy that leads to accurate motor performance, during mind wandering the process becomes disrupted. In this study, we conducted a computer-based experiment with a tracking task. During mind wandering, motor movements were more erratic and less variable, indicative of reduced attentiveness to the continuous demands of the external task. Importantly, the deeper the reported mind wandering, the less accurate and less variable were the mouse movements, suggesting that perceptual decoupling may take place in a graded rather than in an all or nothing manner. Greater movement intermittency was associated with higher tracking accuracy, suggesting that more corrective movements toward a moving target were functional to task performance. Moreover, greater variance in velocity was negatively correlated with tracking accuracy. These findings suggest that periods of inattention to the task have a negative impact on fine motor movement control by making behavior unpredictable, providing support for the idea that there is a decoupling of sensory-motor processes during mind wandering.

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Attention need not always apply: Mind wandering impedes explicit but not implicit sequence learning

Cited by 30 publications

References 87 publications

Mind wandering, motivation, and task performance over time: Evidence that motivation insulates people from the negative effects of mind wandering.

Mind wandering, motivation, and task performance over time: Evidence that motivation insulates people from the negative effects of mind wandering.

Thought dynamics under task demands: Evaluating the influence of task difficulty on unconstrained thought.

Straying Off Course: The Negative Impact of Mind Wandering on Fine Motor Movements

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