Thought dynamics under task demands: Evaluating the influence of task difficulty on unconstrained thought.

Abstract

As research on mind wandering has accelerated, the construct's defining features have expanded and researchers have begun to examine different dimensions of mind wandering. Recently, Christoff and colleagues have argued for the importance of investigating a hitherto neglected variety of mind wandering: "unconstrained thought," or, thought that is relatively unguided by executive-control processes. To date, with only a few studies investigating unconstrained thought, little is known about this intriguing type of mind wandering. Across 2 experiments, we examined, for the first time, whether changes in task demand influence rates of constrained versus unconstrained thoughts. In both experiments, participants completed either an easy (0-back) or hard (2-back) task and responded to intermittently presented thought probes that gauged thought constraint throughout the task. In Experiment 1, we found that participants completing the easy task engaged in unconstrained thoughts more frequently than those completing the difficult task. In Experiment 2, we replicated this result and further demonstrated manipulations of unconstrained thought while also measuring task-relatedness (a common dimension of mind wandering). Finally, exploratory analyses showed associations between constrained thought and age, verbal intelligence, and an assessment of flow ('deep effortless concentration'), thereby adding further evidence to indicate a dissociation between taskrelatedness and constraint. We discuss the methodological and theoretical applications of our findings to the burgeoning field of research on unconstrained thought. All data, analysis, article, and experiment code can be found at https://osf.io/wr2vk/ Public Significance StatementIn the current study, we established that task difficulty can be used to effectively manipulate rates of thought constraint. This study provides novel evidence that when resources are limited, participants engage in less unconstrained thought. These important theoretical contributions further refine thought constraint as a construct within the Dynamic Framework and narrow the candidate processes underlying (un)constrained thought.

Fixation, flexibility, and creativity: The dynamics of mind wandering.

“…Finally, for exploratory purposes, we examined the relation between rates of freely moving thoughts and performance (measured as d prime) on the 2-back task (see Figure 4). Consistent with recent research suggesting that freely moving thinking is resource demanding (Brosowsky et al, 2021), we found that participants who engaged in higher rates of freely moving thought tended to perform more poorly on the 2-back task, r = −.26, 95% CI [−.38, −.14], t (223) = −4.04, p < .001, with strong evidence favoring the alternative over the null, BF 10 = 338.86…”

“…We found no significant correlation between creativity ratings and level of flow, r = −.02, 95% CI [−.14, .10], t (272) = −.28, p = .777, BF 01 = 6.83, and no significant correlation between fluency and flow, r = .09, 95% CI [−.03, .21], t (272) = 1.50, p = .136, BF 01 = 2.38. Finally, we examined the relationship between flow-state responses following the n-back phase and proportion of freely moving thought (during the n-back) and found a significant positive association, r = .20, 95% CI [.08, .31], t (272) = 3.37, p = .001, BF 10 = 32.40, suggesting that flow and freely moving thoughts may reflect overlapping experiential states (see also Brosowsky et al, 2021).…”

“…Our predictions were that (a) increasing rates of freely moving thought during incubation would lead to greater fluency on the AUT, and (b) people who alternate between constrained and freely moving thinking during the creative-incubation interval would tend to perform better on the AUT. To test the first prediction, we manipulated rates of freely moving thought by using a task-difficulty manipulation that has recently been shown to effectively influence rates of freely moving thought (Brosowsky et al, 2021). In particular, participants completed either a 0-back (easy) or 2-back (difficult) task.…”

Catching wandering minds with tapping fingers: neural and behavioral insights into task-unrelated cognition

“…We did not observe a difference in mind wandering propensity between the two task conditions, which is surprising given previous studies demonstrating an effect of task difficulty on mind wandering ( Seli, Konishi, et al. 2018 ; Brosowsky et al. 2021 ).…”

Neural Representations of Self-Generated Thought during Think-aloud fMRI

“…Unconstrained thought/freely-moving thought has relatively low constraints (O'Neill et al, 2021). The frequency of participants' unconstrained thoughts has been found to be influenced by the difficulty of completing a task (Brosowsky et al, 2021) Although the dynamics of thought has been deeply theoretically discussed (Andrews-Hanna et al, 2020;Christoff et al, 2016;DuPre and Spreng, 2018) and somewhat empirically tested using behavioral paradigms (Li et al, 2021;O'Neill et al, 2021;Raffaelli et al, 2021;Sripada and Taxali, 2020), the neuroscientific substrates have not been reported. We told participants to relax and rest as much as possible without deliberately engaging in thinking and to let their minds move as freely as possible.…”