Driving With the Wandering Mind

Yanko, Matthew R.; Spalek, Thomas M.

doi:10.1177/0018720813495280

Cited by 186 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Failure to become aware of one’s surroundings in these instances may represent an instance of mind-wandering while walking. The people may have become focused on their own thoughts and been less aware of their surroundings (He et al, 2011; Yanko and Spalek, 2013, 2014). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Failure to see money on a tree: inattentional blindness for objects that guided behavior

2014

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How is it possible to drive home and have no awareness of the trip? We documented a new form of inattentional blindness in which people fail to become aware of obstacles that had guided their behavior. In our first study, we found that people talking on cell phones while walking waited longer to avoid an obstacle and were less likely to be aware that they had avoided an obstacle than other individual walkers. In our second study, cell phone talkers and texters were less likely to show awareness of money on a tree over the pathway they were traversing. Nonetheless, they managed to avoid walking into the money tree. Perceptual information may be processed in two distinct pathways – one guiding behavior and the other leading to awareness. We observed that people can appropriately use information to guide behavior without awareness.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Yanko and Spalek (2014) found that people sometimes lose awareness while driving in a simulator. When probed, participants acknowledged occasions of mind-wandering; that is thinking about something other than the task of driving (see also He et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Failure to see money on a tree: inattentional blindness for objects that guided behavior

2014

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“…Cheyne et al (2009) proved the robustness of the coefficient of variability—on a given interval, mean reaction time divided by its variability—to study MW in details (Bastian and Sackur, 2013; Esterman et al, 2013). Parallel to those results, subject accuracy is extensively used, whether it during trial to trial tasks (Braem et al, 2015; Durantin et al, 2015; Konishi et al, 2015) or during continuous monitoring, such as in a car simulator (He et al, 2011; Cowley, 2013; Yanko and Spalek, 2014). On the whole, behavioral markers can highlight performance decrements induced by MW in many different tasks.…”

Section: Mw Markers To Study Ootlmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In brain imaging studies, MW is characterized by the activation of the Default Mode Network, a widely distributed brain region comprised of medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex (Mason et al, 2007; Christoff et al, 2009; Christoff, 2012; Konishi et al, 2015). Even though MW is thought to facilitate prospection, introspection and problem solving (Smallwood and Schooler, 2006), performance drops in numerous tasks has been observed during MW episodes (He et al, 2011; Galera et al, 2012; Schad et al, 2012; Bastian and Sackur, 2013; Casner and Schooler, 2013, 2015; Yanko and Spalek, 2014; Berthié et al, 2015). Several aspects outline a possible role of MW in OOTL in highly reliable automated environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autopilot, Mind Wandering, and the Out of the Loop Performance Problem

2017

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To satisfy the increasing demand for safer critical systems, engineers have integrated higher levels of automation, such as glass cockpits in aircraft, power plants, and driverless cars. These guiding principles relegate the operator to a monitoring role, increasing risks for humans to lack system understanding. The out of the loop performance problem arises when operators suffer from complacency and vigilance decrement; consequently, when automation does not behave as expected, understanding the system or taking back manual control may be difficult. Close to the out of the loop problem, mind wandering points to the propensity of the human mind to think about matters unrelated to the task at hand. This article reviews the literature related to both mind wandering and the out of the loop performance problem as it relates to task automation. We highlight studies showing how these phenomena interact with each other while impacting human performance within highly automated systems. We analyze how this proximity is supported by effects observed in automated environment, such as decoupling, sensory attention, and cognitive comprehension decrease. We also show that this link could be useful for detecting out of the loop situations through mind wandering markers. Finally, we examine the limitations of the current knowledge because many questions remain open to characterize interactions between out of the loop, mind wandering, and automation.

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“…We believe that such strong endorsements from leading researchers in the field are likely to result in a surge of research activity building on Axelrod et al (2015)'s result. From a more applied perspective, mind wandering has been, for example, associated with accidents in car driving (He, Becic, Lee, & McCarley, 2011;Yanko & Spalek, 2014) and aviation (Wiegmann et al, 2005), and a technique that consistently and reliably allows to manipulate the propensity to mind-wander has thus great potential to avoid many of these human errors. Furthermore, ruminations, which may be seen as a special case of mind wandering, are core features of clinical conditions such as major depression or obsessivecompulsive disorder.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing propensity to mind‐wander by transcranial direct current stimulation? A registered report

Boayue

Csifcsák

Aslaksen

et al. 2019

Eur J of Neuroscience

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Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been proposed to be able to modulate different cognitive functions. However, recent meta‐analyses conclude that its efficacy is still in question. Recently, an increase in subjects’ propensity to mind‐wander has been reported as a consequence of anodal stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Axelrod et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112, 2015). In addition, an independent group found a decrease in mind wandering after cathodal stimulation of the same region. These findings seem to indicate that high‐level cognitive processes such as mind wandering can reliably be influenced by non‐invasive brain stimulation. However, these previous studies used low sample sizes and are as such subject to concerns regarding the replicability of their findings. In this registered report, we implement a high‐powered replication of Axelrod et al. (2015) finding that mind‐wandering propensity can be increased by anodal tDCS. We used Bayesian statistics and a preregistered sequential‐sampling design resulting in a total sample size of N = 192 participants collected across three different laboratories. Our findings show support against a stimulation effect on self‐reported mind‐wandering scores. The effect was small, in the opposite direction as predicted and not reliably different from zero. Using a Bayes Factor specifically designed to test for replication success, we found strong evidence against a successful replication of the original study. Finally, even when combining data from both the original and replication studies, we could not find evidence for an effect of anodal stimulation. Our results underline the importance of designing studies with sufficient power to detect evidence for or against behavioural effects of non‐invasive brain stimulation techniques, preferentially using robust Bayesian statistics in preregistered reports.

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Driving With the Wandering Mind

Abstract: The results suggest that situations that are likely associated with mind-wandering (e.g., route familiarity) can impair driving performance.

Cited by 186 publications

References 22 publications

Failure to see money on a tree: inattentional blindness for objects that guided behavior

Failure to see money on a tree: inattentional blindness for objects that guided behavior

Autopilot, Mind Wandering, and the Out of the Loop Performance Problem

Increasing propensity to mind‐wander by transcranial direct current stimulation? A registered report

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