mind wandering, earworms and hallucination-like experiences

mind-wandering

• Task-irrelevant thought 

• …what you’re thinking about when you’re meant to be doing something else!

• Decoupling of internal thought from perceptual input (Schooler et al., 2011) - disconnect between what's going on in the external world and what’s happening inside your head

challenges when trying to measure mind wandering

• Happens randomly, cant tell people to mind wander

• Self-report, not often aware of what you're doing 

methods of measuring mind-wandering

• questionnaires

• experience sampling

• brain imaging

• sustained attention to response task

results from questionnaires

Zedelius, Protzko, Schooler (2017a) 

• “how much do you mind wander?” = average of 33% of the day 

• “how much do other people mind wander?” = average of 38% of the day

Mind wandering Questionnaire: Mrazek et al. (2013) 

• “I mind-wander during lectures or presentations.”  

• “I find myself listening with one ear, thinking about something else at the same time”

• issue of retrospective bias

• may not be accurate

experience sampling study

Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) Experience Sampling Study: 2500 people

• Mind wandering occurred during 46.9% of sampling times

• 42.5% positive, 31% neutral, negative 26.5%

• People were less happy when their mind wandered – “a wandering mind is an unhappy one”

• Experience sampling - ask people if they're mind wandering at various times

• however likely to miss instances

types of mind wandering

• positive-constructive daydreaming - vivid imagery, future planning, curiosity eg cats ruling the world

• poor attentional control - feeting thoughts, difficulty focusing. eg name of an actor

• guilty-dysphoric daydreaming - ruminative thoughts, thoughts of failure, aggresison. eg i really shouldnt have said that thing last week

When are we mind wandering

Tends to occur in low cognitive load situations and practised tasks

• Tasks that don't require all of attentional effort, might be bored 

• Reading: Smallwood et al. (2008) more spontaneous mind wandering impaired reading comprehension, the more that people mind-wandered, the worse the recall for the passage, couldn't work out who did the murder in the book

• Lectures: Risko et al. (2012) watched a video recorded lecture either alone (Experiment 1) or in a classroom context (Experiment 2), memory for the lecture material was tested. Mind wandering tends to happen more during video lecture, more that people mind wandered, poorer the memory was for the content 

• Driving:  Galera et al. (2012) 17% of RTAs due to mind wandering, most cases automatic executive control but in some situations it can be a factor in road traffic accidents 

what is your mind doing when it's wandering?

• Neuroimaging: fMRI experiments look at blood flow around the brain during specific tasks, e.g. event-related fMRI

• Pair up a task with where blood goes in the brain

• Baseline condition measure the brain at ‘rest’: compared to experimental condition

• The resting brain can reveal what the mind is doing when it wanders 

areas involved in the default mode network

• Stable and reliable selection of brain areas activated 

• Medial prefrontal cortex - involved in planning and decision making

• Precunus and posterior cingulate cortex - self-referential thought, thinking about themselves, or Thinking about others, Remembering the past and thinking about the future

• Angular gyrus - association between memory and attention, involved in sense of decoupling from internal and external, also out of body experience

further types of mind wandering

• positive - deliberate mind wandering, enage in when bored etc

• poor attentional control - spontaneous mind wandering