For whom the mind wanders, and when: an experience-sampling study of working memory and executive control in daily life

Mind-wandering: phenomenology and function as assessed with a novel experience sampling method

Mind-wandering refers to the occurrence of thoughts whose content is both decoupled from stimuli present in the current environment and unrelated to the task being carried out at the moment of their occurrence. The core of this phenomenon is therefore stimulus-independent and task-unrelated thoughts (SITUTs). In the present study, we designed a novel experience sampling method which permitted to isolate SITUTs from other kinds of distractions (i.e., irrelevant interoceptive/exteroceptive sensory perceptions and interfering thoughts related to the appraisal of the current task). In Experiment 1, we examined the impact of SITUTs on the performance of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; a Go/No-Go task). Analyses demonstrated that SITUTs impair SART performance to the same extent as irrelevant sensory perceptions. In Experiment 2, we further examined SITUTs in order to assess the possible functions of mind-wandering. We observed that the content of most of reported SITUTs refers to the anticipation and planning of future events. Furthermore, this "prospective bias" was increased when participants' attention had been oriented toward their personal goals before performing the SART. These data support the view that an important function of mind-wandering relates to the anticipation and planning of the future.

Mind wandering behind the wheel: performance and oculomotor correlates

OBJECTIVE

An experiment studied the frequency and correlates of driver mind wandering.

BACKGROUND

Driver mind wandering is associated with risk for crash involvement. The present experiment examined the performance and attentional changes by which this effect might occur.

METHOD

Participants performed a car-following task in a high-fidelity driving simulator and were asked to report any time they caught themselves mind wandering. Vehicle control and eye movement data were recorded.

RESULTS

As compared with their attentive performance, participants showed few deficits in vehicle control while mind wandering but tended to focus visual attention narrowly on the road ahead.

CONCLUSION

Data suggest that mind wandering can engender a failure to monitor the environment while driving.

APPLICATION

Results identify behavioral correlates and potential risks of mind wandering that might enable efforts to detect and mitigate driver inattention.

Eye Movements During Mindless Reading

Mindless reading occurs when the eyes continue moving across the page even though the mind is thinking about something unrelated to the text. Despite how commonly it occurs, very little is known about mindless reading. The present experiment examined eye movements during mindless reading. Comparisons of fixation-duration measures collected during intervals of normal reading and intervals of mindless reading indicate that fixations during the latter were longer and less affected by lexical and linguistic variables than fixations during the former. Also, eye movements immediately preceding self-caught mind wandering were especially erratic. These results suggest that the cognitive processes that guide eye movements during normal reading are not engaged during mindless reading. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of eye movement control in reading, for the distinction between experiential awareness and meta-awareness, and for reading comprehension.

Remembering to Forget

Daydreaming mentally transports people to another place or time. Many daydreams are similar in content to the thoughts that people generate when they intentionally try to forget. Thus, thoughts like those generated during daydreaming can cause forgetting of previously encoded events. We conducted two experiments to test the hypothesis that daydreams that are more different from the current moment (e.g., in distance, time, or circumstance) will result in more forgetting than daydreams that are less different from the current moment, because they result in a greater contextual shift. Daydreaming was simulated in the laboratory via instructions to engage in a diversionary thought. Participants learned a list of words, were asked to think about autobiographical memories, and then learned a second list of words. They tended to forget more words from the first list when they thought about their parents’ home than when they thought about their current home (Experiment 1). They also tended to forget more when they thought about an international vacation than when they thought about a domestic vacation (Experiment 2). These results support a context-change account of the amnesic effects of daydreaming.

ADHD and working memory: the impact of central executive deficits and exceeding storage/rehearsal capacity on observed inattentive behavior

Inattentive behavior is considered a core and pervasive feature of ADHD; however, an alternative model challenges this premise and hypothesizes a functional relationship between working memory deficits and inattentive behavior. The current study investigated whether inattentive behavior in children with ADHD is functionally related to the domain-general central executive and/or subsidiary storage/rehearsal components of working memory. Objective observations of children's attentive behavior by independent observers were conducted while children with ADHD (n = 15) and typically developing children (n = 14) completed counterbalanced tasks that differentially manipulated central executive, phonological storage/rehearsal, and visuospatial storage/rehearsal demands. Results of latent variable and effect size confidence interval analyses revealed two conditions that completely accounted for the attentive behavior deficits in children with ADHD: (a) placing demands on central executive processing, the effect of which is evident under even low cognitive loads, and (b) exceeding storage/rehearsal capacity, which has similar effects on children with ADHD and typically developing children but occurs at lower cognitive loads for children with ADHD.

Seven-year-olds allocate attention like adults unless working memory is overloaded

Previous studies have indicated that visual working memory performance increases with age in childhood, but it is not clear why. One main hypothesis has been that younger children are less efficient in their attention; specifically, they are less able to exclude irrelevant items from working memory to make room for relevant items. We examined this hypothesis by measuring visual working memory capacity under a continuum of five attention conditions. A recognition advantage was found for items to be attended as opposed to ignored. The size of this attention-related effect was adult-like in young children with small arrays, suggesting that their attention processes are efficient even though their working memory capacity is smaller than that of older children and adults. With a larger working memory load, this efficiency in young children was compromised. The efficiency of attention cannot be the sole explanation for the capacity difference.

Attentional control activation relates to working memory in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

BACKGROUND

Attentional control difficulties in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might reflect poor working memory (WM) ability, especially because WM ability and attentional control rely on similar brain regions. The current study examined whether WM ability might explain group differences in brain activation between adults with ADHD and normal control subjects during attentional demand.

METHODS

Participants were 20 adults with ADHD combined subtype with no comorbid psychiatric or learning disorders and 23 control subjects similar in age, IQ, and gender. The WM measures were obtained from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III and Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised. Brain activation was assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a Color-Word Stroop task.

RESULTS

Group differences in WM ability explained a portion of the activation in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which has been related to the creation and maintenance of an attentional set for task-relevant information. In addition, greater WM ability predicted increased activation of brain regions related to stimulus-driven attention and response selection processes in the ADHD group but not in the control group.

CONCLUSIONS

The inability to maintain an appropriate task set in young adults with combined type ADHD, associated with decreased activity in left DLPFC, might in part be due to poor WM ability. Furthermore, in individuals with ADHD, higher WM ability might relate to increased recruitment of stimulus-driven attention and response selection processes, perhaps as a compensatory strategy.

Does mind wandering reflect executive function or executive failure? Comment on Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008)

In this comment, we contrast different conceptions of mind wandering that were presented in 2 recent theoretical reviews: Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). We also introduce a new perspective on the role of executive control in mind wandering by integrating empirical evidence presented in Smallwood and Schooler with 2 theoretical frameworks: Watkins's elaborated control theory and Klinger's (1971, 2009) current concerns theory. In contrast to the Smallwood-Schooler claim that mind wandering recruits executive resources, we argue that mind wandering represents a failure of executive control and that it is dually determined by the presence of automatically generated thoughts in response to environmental and mental cues and the ability of the executive-control system to deal with this interference. We present empirical support for this view from experimental, neuroimaging, and individual-differences research.

Current concerns in involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories

Involuntary autobiographical memories are conscious memories of personal events that come to mind with no preceding attempts at retrieval. It is often assumed that such memories are closely related to current concerns--i.e., uncompleted personal goals. Here we examined involuntary versus voluntary (deliberately retrieved) autobiographical memories in relation to earlier registered current concerns measured by the Personal Concern Inventory (PCI; Cox & Klinger, 2000). We found no differences between involuntary and voluntary memories with regard to frequency or characteristics of current concern-related contents. However, memories related to current concerns were rated as more central to the person's identity, life story and expectations for the future than non-concern-related memories, irrespective of mode of recall. Depression and PTSD symptoms correlated positively with the proportion of current concern-related involuntary and voluntary memories. The findings support the view that involuntary and voluntary remembering is subject to similar motivational constraints.

Tracking the train of thought from the laboratory into everyday life: an experience-sampling study of mind wandering across controlled and ecological contexts

In an experience-sampling study that bridged laboratory, ecological, and individual-differences approaches to mind-wandering research, 72 subjects completed an executive-control task with periodic thought probes (reported by McVay & Kane, 2009) and then carried PDAs for a week that signaled them eight times daily to report immediately whether their thoughts were off task. Subjects who reported more mind wandering during the laboratory task endorsed more mind-wandering experiences during everyday life (and were more likely to report worries as off-task thought content). We also conceptually replicated laboratory findings that mind wandering predicts task performance: Subjects rated their daily-life performance to be impaired when they reported off-task thoughts, with greatest impairment when subjects' mind wandering lacked metaconsciousness. The propensity to mind wander appears to be a stable cognitive characteristic and seems to predict performance difficulties in daily life, just as it does in the laboratory.

An Evaluation of a Classroom-Based Intervention to Help Overcome Working Memory Difficulties and Improve Long-Term Academic Achievement

Two contrasting forms of classroom-based intervention were implemented with 256 primary school children identified as having working memory (WM) difficulties. In one, teaching staff were trained to provide educational environments that were sensitive to the needs of identified children with WM difficulties. The second form of intervention utilized a behavioral teaching approach in which identified children were provided with regular, brief, and highly focused inputs in relevant basic skills areas. A third group of children with similar WM difficulties served as controls. At the end of the year, there was no evidence that either of the intervention programs had resulted in greater WM or academic performance (on Wechsler mathematics and reading tests) than for controls. However, classroom observation data indicated that the extent to which teachers implemented desirable strategies at any time point, inside or outside of the interventions (that is, across all of the research groups), proved to be a predictor of the children’s attainment. The implications of these findings for further work in this burgeoning field are discussed.

Multiple concurrent thoughts: The meaning and developmental neuropsychology of working memory

Working memory can be described as the small amount of information held in a readily accessible state, available to help in the completion of cognitive tasks. There has been considerable confusion among researchers regarding the definition of working memory, which can be attributed to the difficulty of reconciling descriptions from working memory researchers with very different theoretical orientations. Here I review theories of working memory and some of the main issues in the field, discuss current behavioral and neuropsychological research that can address these issues, and consider the implications for cognitive development.

Conducting the train of thought: working memory capacity, goal neglect, and mind wandering in an executive-control task

On the basis of the executive-attention theory of working memory capacity (WMC; e.g., M. J. Kane, A. R. A. Conway, D. Z. Hambrick, & R. W. Engle, 2007), the authors tested the relations among WMC, mind wandering, and goal neglect in a sustained attention to response task (SART; a go/no-go task). In 3 SART versions, making conceptual versus perceptual processing demands, subjects periodically indicated their thought content when probed following rare no-go targets. SART processing demands did not affect mind-wandering rates, but mind-wandering rates varied with WMC and predicted goal-neglect errors in the task; furthermore, mind-wandering rates partially mediated the WMC-SART relation, indicating that WMC-related differences in goal neglect were due, in part, to variation in the control of conscious thought.

Adaptive training leads to sustained enhancement of poor working memory in children

Working memory plays a crucial role in supporting learning, with poor progress in reading and mathematics characterizing children with low memory skills. This study investigated whether these problems can be overcome by a training program designed to boost working memory. Children with low working memory skills were assessed on measures of working memory, IQ and academic attainment before and after training on either adaptive or non-adaptive versions of the program. Adaptive training that taxed working memory to its limits was associated with substantial and sustained gains in working memory, with age-appropriate levels achieved by the majority of children. Mathematical ability also improved significantly 6 months following adaptive training. These findings indicate that common impairments in working memory and associated learning difficulties may be overcome with this behavioral treatment.

Reducing the disruptive effects of interruption: a cognitive framework for analysing the costs and benefits of intervention strategies

Interruptions are ubiquitous, and they can lead to disastrous consequences. The goal of this paper is to describe remedies that have been proposed to reduce the disruption caused by interruptions based on an understanding of how principles of human cognitive processing bear on the sequence of events that take place during an interruption. We show that interruptions tap disparate cognitive operations, from attention to decision making to memory. We illustrate how these cognitive processes can lead to interruption-induced errors, and how they can help in understanding potential problems with remedies that have been proposed to ameliorate those effects. We present a framework in which the load imposed by the task and the cost of an error suggests the types of solutions that should be considered for a given domain. We then discuss the implications of this approach for understanding and reducing the negative effect of interruptions in transportation domains.

Working-memory capacity predicts the executive control of visual search among distractors: The influences of sustained and selective attention

Variation in working-memory capacity (WMC) predicts individual differences in only some attention-control capabilities. Whereas higher WMC subjects outperform lower WMC subjects in tasks requiring the restraint of prepotent but inappropriate responses, and the constraint of attentional focus to target stimuli against distractors, they do not differ in prototypical visual-search tasks, even those that yield steep search slopes and engender top-down control. The present three experiments tested whether WMC, as measured by complex memory span tasks, would predict search latencies when the 1–8 target locations to be searched appeared alone, versus appearing among distractor locations to be ignored, with the latter requiring selective attentional focus. Subjects viewed target-location cues and then fixated on those locations over either long (1,500–1,550 ms) or short (300 ms) delays. Higher WMC subjects identified targets faster than did lower WMC subjects only in the presence of distractors and only over long fixation delays. WMC thus appears to affect subjects’ ability to maintain a constrained attentional focus over time.

In search of decay in verbal short-term memory

Is forgetting in the short term due to decay with the mere passage of time, interference from other memoranda, or both? Past research on short-term memory has revealed some evidence for decay and a plethora of evidence showing that short-term memory is worsened by interference. However, none of these studies has directly contrasted decay and interference in short-term memory in a task that rules out the use of rehearsal processes. In this article the authors present a series of studies using a novel paradigm to address this problem directly, by interrogating the operation of decay and interference in short-term memory without rehearsal confounds. The results of these studies indicate that short-term memories are subject to very small decay effects with the mere passage of time but that interference plays a much larger role in their degradation. The authors discuss the implications of these results for existing models of memory decay and interference.

Experience sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind wandering

Although mind wandering occupies a large proportion of our waking life, its neural basis and relation to ongoing behavior remain controversial. We report an fMRI study that used experience sampling to provide an online measure of mind wandering during a concurrent task. Analyses focused on the interval of time immediately preceding experience sampling probes demonstrate activation of default network regions during mind wandering, a finding consistent with theoretical accounts of default network functions. Activation in medial prefrontal default network regions was observed both in association with subjective self-reports of mind wandering and an independent behavioral measure (performance errors on the concurrent task). In addition to default network activation, mind wandering was associated with executive network recruitment, a finding predicted by behavioral theories of off-task thought and its relation to executive resources. Finally, neural recruitment in both default and executive network regions was strongest when subjects were unaware of their own mind wandering, suggesting that mind wandering is most pronounced when it lacks meta-awareness. The observed parallel recruitment of executive and default network regions--two brain systems that so far have been assumed to work in opposition--suggests that mind wandering may evoke a unique mental state that may allow otherwise opposing networks to work in cooperation. The ability of this study to reveal a number of crucial aspects of the neural recruitment associated with mind wandering underscores the value of combining subjective self-reports with online measures of brain function for advancing our understanding of the neurophenomenology of subjective experience.

Lost in the sauce: the effects of alcohol on mind wandering

Alcohol consumption alters consciousness in ways that make drinking both alluring and hazardous. Recent advances in the study of consciousness using a mind-wandering paradigm permit a rigorous examination of the effects of alcohol on experiential consciousness and metaconsciousness. Fifty-four male social drinkers consumed alcohol (0.82 g/kg) or a placebo beverage and then performed a mind-wandering reading task. This task indexed both self-caught and probe-caught zone-outs to distinguish between mind wandering inside and outside of awareness. Compared with participants who drank the placebo, those who drank alcohol were significantly more likely to report that they were zoning out when probed. After this increase in mind wandering was accounted for, alcohol also lowered the probability of catching oneself zoning out. The results suggest that alcohol increases mind wandering while simultaneously reducing the likelihood of noticing one's mind wandering. Findings are discussed with regard to theories of alcohol and theories of consciousness.

Executive functions, self-regulation, and chronic pain: a review

BACKGROUND

Chronic pain conditions are complicated and challenging to live with. Capacity to adjust to such conditions may depend on the ability to self-regulate, that is, the ability to alter thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Self-regulation appears to rely on executive cognitive functions, and the current review, therefore, sought to draw attention to the impact of self-regulatory capacity and executive functions on chronic pain.

DISCUSSION

Chronic pain conditions present with complex interactions of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physiological components for which self-regulatory ability is crucial. The ability to self-regulate varies, and self-regulatory strength appears to be a limited resource that can be fatigued. The many challenges of chronic pain conditions could, therefore, tax self-regulatory strength, leading to self-regulatory deficits.

CONCLUSION

The current review proposes a relationship among pain, self-regulatory capacity, self-regulatory demands, executive functions, and self-regulatory fatigue, suggesting that executive functions and self-regulatory deficits are indeed part of the etiology and maintenance of chronic pain conditions.

Anatomy of an error: a bidirectional state model of task engagement/disengagement and attention-related errors

We present arguments and evidence for a three-state attentional model of task engagement/disengagement. The model postulates three states of mind-wandering: occurrent task inattention, generic task inattention, and response disengagement. We hypothesize that all three states are both causes and consequences of task performance outcomes and apply across a variety of experimental and real-world tasks. We apply this model to the analysis of a widely used GO/NOGO task, the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). We identify three performance characteristics of the SART that map onto the three states of the model: RT variability, anticipations, and omissions. Predictions based on the model are tested, and largely corroborated, via regression and lag-sequential analyses of both successful and unsuccessful withholding on NOGO trials as well as self-reported mind-wandering and everyday cognitive errors. The results revealed theoretically consistent temporal associations among the state indicators and between these and SART errors as well as with self-report measures. Lag analysis was consistent with the hypotheses that temporal transitions among states are often extremely abrupt and that the association between mind-wandering and performance is bidirectional. The bidirectional effects suggest that errors constitute important occasions for reactive mind-wandering. The model also enables concrete phenomenological, behavioral, and physiological predictions for future research.

When is your head at? An exploration of the factors associated with the temporal focus of the wandering mind

Two experiments employed experience sampling to examine the factors associated with a prospective and retrospective focus during mind wandering. Experiment One explored the contribution of working memory and indicated that participants generally prospect when the task does not require continuous monitoring. Experiment Two demonstrated that in the context of reading, interest in what was read suppressed both past and future-related task-unrelated-thought. Moreover, in disinterested individuals the temporal focus during mind wandering depended on the amount of experience with the topic matter-less experienced individuals tended to prospect, while more experienced individuals tended to retrospect. Together these results suggest that during mind wandering participants' are inclined to prospect as long as the task does not require their undivided attention and raise the intriguing possibility that autobiographical associations with the current task environment have the potential to cue the disinterested mind.

Serotonergic function, two-mode models of self-regulation, and vulnerability to depression: what depression has in common with impulsive aggression

Evidence from diverse literatures supports the viewpoint that two modes of self-regulation exist, a lower-order system that responds quickly to associative cues of the moment and a higher-order system that responds more reflectively and planfully; that low serotonergic function is linked to relative dominance of the lower-order system; that how dominance of the lower-order system is manifested depends on additional variables; and that low serotonergic function therefore can promote behavioral patterns as divergent as impulsive aggression and lethargic depression. Literatures reviewed include work on two-mode models; studies of brain function supporting the biological plausibility of the two-mode view and the involvement of serotonergic pathways in functions pertaining to it; and studies relating low serotonergic function to impulsiveness, aggression (including extreme violence), aspects of personality, and depression vulnerability. Substantial differences between depression and other phenomena reviewed are interpreted by proposing that depression reflects both low serotonergic function and low reward sensitivity. The article closes with brief consideration of the idea that low serotonergic function relates to even more diverse phenomena, whose natures depend in part on sensitivities of other systems.

When attention matters: the curious incident of the wandering mind

Attention plays an essential role in the construction of the mental models necessary to make sense of ongoing events. In this article, we consider the implications of temporary inattention during reading for the construction and updating of the situation model during text comprehension. We examined how self-reported mind wandering during reading relates to the online construction of the situation model of the narrative, which in this case involved the pseudonym used by a villain in a detective novella. In successful readers, mind wandering without awareness, referred to as zoning out, was less frequent when the text revealed a clue about the villain's identity. Additional analyses indicated that mind wandering interfered with the construction of the situation model independent of the participants' ability to retrieve factual information. The analysis of the temporal consequences of zoning out indicated that lapses had the greatest influence when they occurred early in the narrative. These results confirm the intuition that zoning out during reading is an indication that the construction of the situation model has gone awry, and underscore the fact that our ability to understand ongoing events depends on the ability to pay attention when it matters.

Psychotropic placebos reduce the misinformation effect by increasing monitoring at test

A psychotropic placebo can help people resist the misinformation effect, an effect thought to be caused by a shift to more stringent source monitoring. When this shift occurs has been unclear. To address this issue we gave some people - but not others - a phoney cognitive-enhancing drug we called R273. Shortly afterwards, everyone took part in a misinformation effect experiment. To gather evidence about source monitoring we surreptitiously recorded time to read the misleading postevent narrative, and response time at test. Our findings suggest that people shifted to more stringent source monitoring at test. Moreover, people with higher working memory capacity (WMC) performed better than people with lower WMC - but only when they were told they had received R273, a finding that fits with research showing that WMC can confer advantages in situations demanding effortful control, but not when automatic heuristics suffice.

Cognitive control mechanisms, emotion and memory: a neural perspective with implications for psychopathology

In this paper we provide a focused review of the literature examining neural mechanisms involved in cognitive control over memory processes that can influence, and in turn are influenced by, emotional processes. The review is divided into two parts, the first focusing on working memory and the second on long-term memory. With regard to working memory, we discuss the neural bases of (1) control mechanisms that can select against distracting emotional information, (2) mechanisms that can regulate emotional reactions or responses, (3) how mood state influences cognitive control, and (4) individual differences in control mechanisms. For long-term memory, we briefly review (1) the neural substrates of emotional memory, (2) the cognitive and neural mechanisms that are involved in controlling emotional memories and (3) how these systems are altered in post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally, we consider tentative generalizations that can be drawn from this relatively unexplored conjunction of research endeavors.

"Thinking about not-thinking": neural correlates of conceptual processing during Zen meditation

Recent neuroimaging studies have identified a set of brain regions that are metabolically active during wakeful rest and consistently deactivate in a variety the performance of demanding tasks. This “default network” has been functionally linked to the stream of thoughts occurring automatically in the absence of goal-directed activity and which constitutes an aspect of mental behavior specifically addressed by many meditative practices. Zen meditation, in particular, is traditionally associated with a mental state of full awareness but reduced conceptual content, to be attained via a disciplined regulation of attention and bodily posture. Using fMRI and a simplified meditative condition interspersed with a lexical decision task, we investigated the neural correlates of conceptual processing during meditation in regular Zen practitioners and matched control subjects. While behavioral performance did not differ between groups, Zen practitioners displayed a reduced duration of the neural response linked to conceptual processing in regions of the default network, suggesting that meditative training may foster the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation.