Differential effects of mind-wandering and visual distraction on age-related changes in neuro-electric brain activity and variability

Maillet, David; Yu, Lujia; Lau, Brian; Chow, Ricky; Alain, Claude; Grady, Cheryl L.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107565

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Because the P300 can provide an index of executive resources (e.g., Kramer & Strayer, 1988 ; Wickens et al, 1983 ), the decreased P300 amplitude during mind wandering indicates that our executive resources have been withdrawn, at least partly, from the primary task and are presumably directed toward task - unrelated thoughts (Smallwood, 2010 ; Smallwood & Schooler, 2006 ). Similar results were obtained in subsequent studies (Baldwin et al, 2017 ; Barron et al, 2011 ; Kam et al, 2014 ; Maillet et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Existing Theories Of Mind Wanderingsupporting

confidence: 88%

Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective

Wong

Willoughby

Machado

2022

Psychological Research

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Mind wandering is a universal phenomenon in which our attention shifts away from the task at hand toward task-unrelated thoughts. Despite it inherently involving a shift in mental set, little is known about the role of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering. In this article we consider the potential of cognitive flexibility as a mechanism for mediating and/or regulating the occurrence of mind wandering. Our review begins with a brief introduction to the prominent theories of mind wandering—the executive failure hypothesis, the decoupling hypothesis, the process-occurrence framework, and the resource-control account of sustained attention. Then, after discussing their respective merits and weaknesses, we put forward a new perspective of mind wandering focused on cognitive flexibility, which provides an account more in line with the data to date, including why older populations experience a reduction in mind wandering. After summarizing initial evidence prompting this new perspective, drawn from several mind-wandering and task-switching studies, we recommend avenues for future research aimed at further understanding the importance of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering.

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Section: Existing Theories Of Mind Wanderingsupporting

confidence: 88%

Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective

Wong

Willoughby

Machado

2022

Psychological Research

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“…Kaiser et al, 2008;Klawohn et al, 2020;Röschke & Wagner, 2003). Further, higher RTV and lower P3b have been found during mind-wandering episodes, as compared to states of focused attention during task completion (Barron et al, 2011;Maillet et al, 2020;Smallwood et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I can’t focus now, I will study tomorrow” - The link between academic procrastination and resistance to distraction.

Wiwatowska¹,

Pietruch²,

Katafoni³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Procrastination is a tendency to delay tasks, despite knowing that it might lead to negative consequences. Previous studies have shown that students who frequently procrastinate, present difficulties with maintaining attention during task completion. These problems might be related to decreased resistance to distraction caused by task-irrelevant stimuli appearing in the surrounding environment. In the present study we verified this hypothesis investigating the relationship between procrastination and susceptibility to distraction with the use of behavioral and neurophysiological measures. We recruited high (HP) and low (LP) procrastinating students and asked them to perform an Auditory Visual Distraction task which required participants to respond to visual stimuli and ignore the preceding sounds. Although HP (vs. LP) did not show increased orientation of attention towards distracting sounds, they were still less attentive to task-relevant stimuli. These results indicate that procrastination-related attentional deficits might be linked to other sources of distraction, such as mind-wandering episodes.

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“…After obtaining clean data, the on-task and off-task trials were averaged separately. The P1 and N1 component was investigated in P7 and P8 electrodes as was done in other ERPs studies (di Russo et al, 2019 ), while the P3 component verbed in Pz and Fz electrodes; following (Denkova et al, 2018 ; Gonçalves et al, 2018 ; Maillet et al, 2020 ). A time window of 50–200 ms was selected for detecting the peak amplitude of P1, 100–250 ms for N1, and 250–600 ms for P3.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) tracks “sticky” thinking, but not more general mind-wandering

Yang

Paller

Vugt

2022

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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For a large proportion of our daily lives, spontaneously occurring thoughts tend to disengage our minds from goal-directed thinking. Previous studies showed that EEG features such as the P3 and alpha oscillations can predict mind-wandering to some extent, but only with accuracies of around 60%. A potential candidate for improving prediction accuracy is the Steady-State Visual Evoked Potential (SSVEP), which is used frequently in single-trial contexts such as brain-computer interfaces as a marker of the direction of attention. In this study, we modified the sustained attention to response task (SART) that is usually employed to measure spontaneous thought to incorporate the SSVEP elicited by a 12.5-Hz flicker. We then examined whether the SSVEP could track and allow for the prediction of the stickiness and task-relatedness dimensions of spontaneous thought. Our results show that the SSVEP evoked by flickering words was able to distinguish between more and less sticky thinking but not between whether a participant was on- or off-task. This suggests that the SSVEP is able to track spontaneous thinking when it is strongly disengaged from the task (as in the sticky form of off-task thinking) but not off-task thought in general. Future research should determine the exact dimensions of spontaneous thought to which the SSVEP is most sensitive.

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Differential effects of mind-wandering and visual distraction on age-related changes in neuro-electric brain activity and variability

Cited by 14 publications

References 64 publications

Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective

Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective

“I can’t focus now, I will study tomorrow” - The link between academic procrastination and resistance to distraction.

The steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) tracks “sticky” thinking, but not more general mind-wandering

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