Manipulating cues in mind wandering: Verbal cues affect the frequency and the temporal focus of mind wandering

Abstract

Our understanding of mind wandering (MW) has dramatically increased over the past decade. A key challenge still facing research is the identification of the processes and events that directly cause and control its occurrence. In the present study we sought to shed light on this question, by investigating the effects of verbal cues on the frequency and temporal focus of MW. To this aim, we experimentally manipulated the presence of irrelevant verbal cues during a vigilance task, in two independent groups (Verbal-cues group vs. No-cues group).We found that compared to the No-cues group, the Verbal-cues group reported a higher amount of MW, mostly triggered by the irrelevant cue-words, and a higher proportion of past-oriented MW compared to the other temporal orientations. These results demonstrate that task-irrelevant verbal stimulation increases the frequency of MW and steers its temporal orientation toward the past. Implications for the research on MW are discussed.

A closer look at the timecourse of mind wandering: pupillary responses and behaviour

“…Several recent studies have shown that MW is a cue-dependent phenomenon, triggered by both internal and external events. Specifically, there is evidence that both task-irrelevant and task-relevant external stimuli [7][8][9][10][11]13] might act as triggers for MW episodes. In a recent study, Pelagatti et al [21] found a significantly larger pupil dilation following cue-words reported by participants as the trigger of MW compared to non-trigger words (with similar emotional content), and the pupil dilation appeared to increase over time.…”

“…The results obtained with this vigilance task revealed that (i) the majority of recorded MW episodes are reported as being triggered by the task-irrelevant verbal cues, (ii) the exposure to verbal cues may affect the temporal orientation of MW, increasing the proportion of past-oriented MW [11,13]. However, one of the limitations of these studies is that MW triggers are identified by introspective measures, i.e.…”

“…Participants completed a modified version of the computer-based vigilance task [15] already used in previous studies [e.g., 11,13,20]. The task consisted of 1020 trials, presented in a fixed order, each lasting 2 s. A white fixation point (0.2 deg diameter) was always shown at screen centre.…”

“…According to Klinger's current concerns hypothesis [4,5,6] "spontaneous thoughts are probably triggered by cues (meaningful stimuli) that may be external in the environment or internal in the person's own mental activity and that are associated with one or another of the individual's goals" [6, p. 216]. Over the last years, an increasing number of studies [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] have investigated the potential contribution of environmental stimuli (not only goal-related stimuli) to MW. The results converge in showing that both task-relevant [7][8][9] and task-irrelevant external stimuli [10,11,13] Running head: Timecourse of mind wandering 4 might indeed act as triggers for MW, challenging the traditional view of MW as completely stimulus-independent [14] and self-generated mental activity [3].…”

“…At the methodological level, an important contribution has been provided by a new experimental paradigm, developed by Schlagman and Kvavilashvili (2008) and extensively used to investigate involuntary autobiographical memories [e.g., [16][17][18][19][20], and recently adapted to study MW [11,13].…”