Is an off-task mind a freely-moving mind? Examining the relationship between different dimensions of thought

Mills, Caitlin; Raffaelli, Quentin; Irving, Zachary C.; Stan, Dylan; Christoff, Kalina

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2017.10.003

Cited by 108 publications

(161 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Neither perceptual decoupling nor task‐unrelatedness correlated well with free movement in the stream of thought. This finding suggests that freedom of movement is a largely orthogonal dimension of thought—one not captured well by the two most common concepts in use today in the study of self‐generated thought (perceptual decoupling and task‐unrelatedness) …”

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Here, we briefly consider several outstanding issues and future directions for research into the affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought: first, the ongoing controversy over whether self‐generated forms of thought are, overall, aversive; second, the developing field of study investigating changes in the frequency, content, and affect of self‐generated thought over the lifespan; and finally, the increasing need to disentangle different types of self‐generated thought, and the different dimensions of these types of thought, using carefully chosen terminology and questions for participants …”

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have recently advanced a theoretical framework that seeks to capture many of these qualities in a unified cognitive state space, and recent research has sought to address such issues with careful use of terms and detailed explorations of how different dimensions of self‐generated thought are interrelated. For instance, Mills and colleagues used a smartphone application to sample participants’ thoughts in everyday life and investigated the extent to which thoughts that were task‐unrelated and perceptually decoupled were also freely moving (i.e., the movement of the stream of thought was relatively free from deliberate or automatic constraints; “freely moving” is a key quality of mind‐wandering in our theoretical model). Neither perceptual decoupling nor task‐unrelatedness correlated well with free movement in the stream of thought.…”

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These examples are hardly exhaustive, but should suffice to show that the terminology employed by experimenters can influence how participants understand the experiment and classify their mental content; moreover, the questions experimenters pose will constrain the probable, and even possible, interpretations of their data. Careful consideration of these issues in future research will be crucial to understanding how various types of self‐generated thought differ, how their different dimensions are interrelated, and how various types and dimensions of self‐generated thought relate to everyday behavior and clinical conditions.…”

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The term mind‐wandering is also often employed, but its various definitions and operationalizations have not yet fully taken into account its relationship to the many dimensions of self‐generated thought. For instance, most studies define mind‐wandering simply as off‐task thought, but being off‐task is only one of many possible dimensions of thought; results from detailed experience sampling show that whether or not thoughts are off‐task does not correlate strongly with how freely moving they are (i.e., to what degree they lack deliberate or automatic constraints; cf. Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought

Fox

Andrews‐Hanna

Mills

et al. 2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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Despite increasing scientific interest in self-generated thought-mental content largely independent of the immediate environment-there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self-generated thought-normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep. In synthesizing existing literature on this topic, we reveal consistent findings pertaining to the prevalence, valence, and variability of emotion in self-generated thought, and highlight how these factors might interact with self-generated thought to influence general well-being. We integrate these psychological findings with recent neuroimaging research, bringing attention to the neural correlates of affect in self-generated thought. We show that affect in self-generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within and across individuals), and consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing, including the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal cortex. Many factors modulate these typical psychological and neural patterns, however; the emerging affective neuroscience of self-generated thought must endeavor to link brain function and subjective experience in both everyday self-generated thought as well as its dysfunctions in mental illness.

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Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Outstanding Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought

Fox

Andrews‐Hanna

Mills

et al. 2018

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Self Cite

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A Wandering Mind is Not Always a Creative Mind: How Thought Dynamics Explain the Relationship between Mind Wandering and Creativity

de Rooij,

Atef,

Faber

2024

Journal of Creative Behavior

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A wandering mind is not always a creative mind. Anecdotes about ideas spontaneously entering awareness during walks, showers, and other off‐task activities are plenty. The science behind it, however, is still inconclusive. Creativity might result from how thought context—whether thoughts are on‐task or off‐task—relates to thought dynamics—how thoughts unfold. To explore this, study 1 (n = 85) surveyed creative professionals about a single idea they had earlier in the day. The spontaneity of thoughts positively correlated with self‐reported creativity, whereas off‐task thoughts or doing something else did not. Study 2 (n = 180) replicated these findings in a student sample during an idea generation task and added that free movement of thoughts also correlates with self‐reported originality during idea generation. As indicated by expert ratings, no relationship of thought dynamics and thought context was found with population‐level creativity. Herewith, this study suggests that thought dynamics, rather than thought context, explain the often suggested relationship between mind wandering and creativity.

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Catching Mind Wandering With Pupillometry: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges

Pelagatti,

Blini,

Vannucci

2024

WIRES Cognitive Science

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Mind‐wandering (MW) refers to the shift of attention away from an ongoing task and/or external environment towards mental contents (e.g., memories, prospective thoughts) unrelated to the task. Physiological measures (e.g., pupil size, EEG, and fMRI) have often been acquired as objective markers for MW states, which has greatly helped their study as well as triangulation with other measures. Pupillometry in particular has been used as a covert biomarker of MW because it is reliably modulated by several distinct processes spanning arousal, emotion, and attention, and it signals attentional lapses. Yet, coupling MW and the measurement of pupil size has led to seemingly contrasting results. We argue that, common to the studies reviewed here, one reason is resolving to the measurement of tonic pupil size, which reflects low‐frequency, slow changes in one's physiological state, and thus implicitly assumes that MW is a static, long‐lasting process. We then additionally focus on three major axes of variability in the reviewed studies: (i) the definition and measurement of MW; (ii) the impact of contextual aspects, such as task demands and individual arousal levels; (iii) the identification and tracking of MW in combination with pupillary measures. We provide an overview of these differences and put forward recommendations for using physiological measures—including, but not limited to, pupil size—in MW research effectively. In conclusion, pupillometry can be a very informative tool for MW research, provided that it is used with the due methodological caution.

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Is an off-task mind a freely-moving mind? Examining the relationship between different dimensions of thought

Cited by 108 publications

References 36 publications

Affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought

Affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought

A Wandering Mind is Not Always a Creative Mind: How Thought Dynamics Explain the Relationship between Mind Wandering and Creativity

Catching Mind Wandering With Pupillometry: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges

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