Mind wandering: Tracking perceptual decoupling, mental improvisation, and mental navigation.

Gonçalves, Óscar F.; Silva, Mariana Rachel Dias da; Carvalho, Sandra; Coelho, Patrícia Rocha; Lema, Alberto; Mendes, Augusto J.; Branco, Diogo; Collus, Jorge; Boggio, Paulo S.; Leite, Jorge

doi:10.1037/pne0000237

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…This is demonstrated, for example, by systematic differences in oculomotor movements during reading prior to reports of mind wandering. For example, fixations during mindless reading have been found to be longer and less sensitive to lexical and linguistic features than during normal reading (e.g., Foulsham et al, 2013;Reichle et al, 2010). This observation is in line with studies reporting changes in both accuracy and reaction times during button presses or mouse clicks in vigilance tasks.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 82%

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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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 82%

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

Silva

Postma

2021

Journal of Motor Behavior

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“…First, they were asked whether their MW was intentional (“yes or no” response). Then, they were asked to respond on a scale of 1–10 (1 = completely disagree ; 10 = completely agree ) to the following: “My mind was disconnected from what surrounds me”; “I was imagining that I was somewhere else,” and “The content of my thoughts was very diverse.” These items were intended to assess the degree of perceptual decoupling, mental navigation, and mental improvisation, respectively (Gonçalves et al, 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…perceptual decoupling, mental improvisation, and mental navigation (Gonçalves et al, 2020). Individuals who mind wander become perceptually decoupled, showing decreased alertness and sensory processing of the extracorporeal environment (Braboszcz & Delorme, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While performing a task, the mind periodically escapes into space and time travel (Corballis, 2013), posing sudden, subjectively unpredicted and often unnoticed mind changes (Metzinger, 2018). This condition, known as mind wandering (MW) (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015), is frequent in our daily lives, and it encompasses processes such as perceptual decoupling, mental improvisation, and mental navigation (Gonçalves et al, 2020). Individuals who mind wander become perceptually decoupled, showing decreased alertness and sensory processing of the extracorporeal environment (Braboszcz & Delorme, 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Mind wandering and musical creativity in jazz improvisation

Palhares

Branco

Gonçalves

2021

Psychology of Music

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Mind wandering is a prevalent and ubiquitous phenomenon. Several studies suggest that mind wandering benefits creativity if it occurs in the incubation period of a creative problem-solving task. However, it could be impairing real-time expression of creative behavior if it occurs during the course of a creative task. This dissociation between incubation and performance suggests that mind wandering poses a double-edged sword to creative cognition. Jazz improvisation provides an ecologically useful framework for studying the effects of mind wandering on creativity. Here we hypothesized that mind wandering during a musical improvisation task would be associated with higher levels of musical creativity, compared with on-task attention. Nine experienced musicians performed several jazz improvisation tasks interleaved with the presentation of random thought probes. The results showed that musical improvisation during unintentional mind wandering was associated with higher musical creativity when compared with improvisation during on-task attention. However, mind wandering did not impact overall improvisational quality. Altogether, these data suggest that the positive relationship between mind wandering and creativity also extends to artistic performance domains.

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“…We administered a large-scale questionnaire study in which we asked participants to answer questions concerning individuals' tendency to disengage from the environment as they mind wander, concerning the dynamics and variability of mind wandering thoughts, and concerning the general tendency to mind wander across space and time. Specifically, items from our Mind Wandering Inventory (Gonçalves et al, 2020) were intended to capture the following dimensions:…”

Section: Mind Wandering Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Time Has Come to Be Mindwanderful: Mind Wandering and the Intuitive Psychology Mode

Gonçalves

Silva

2022

Social and Affective Neuroscience of Everyday Human Interaction

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No matter how hard you try—pinching different parts of your body, slapping your face, or moving restlessly in your seat—you cannot prevent your mind from occasionally escaping from the present experience as you enter into a mental navigation mode. Sometimes spontaneously, others deliberately, your mind may move to a different time—you may see yourself running an experiment inspired by the chapter you just finished reading or you may imagine yourself on a quantum leap into the future as you fantasize about the delivery of your Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Your mind may move to a distinct space, for example, as you replay last weekend’s party or anticipate a most desirable date, and may even venture into the mind of another (e.g., as you embody the mind of the author you are currently reading). Our minds can accomplish all this mental navigation in fractions of a second, allowing us to see ourselves or even impersonate different people across space and time. While teleportation and time travel may never be physically possible, our wandering minds are indeed very accomplished “time machines” (Suddendorf T, Corballis MC, Behav Brain Sci 30(3), 2007).

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Mind wandering: Tracking perceptual decoupling, mental improvisation, and mental navigation.

Cited by 7 publications

References 30 publications

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

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

Mind wandering and musical creativity in jazz improvisation

The Time Has Come to Be Mindwanderful: Mind Wandering and the Intuitive Psychology Mode

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