Mind wandering is a pervasive threat to transportation safety, potentially accounting for a substantial number of crashes and fatalities. In the current study, mind wandering was induced through completion of the same task for 5 days, consisting of a 20-min monotonous freeway-driving scenario, a cognitive depletion task, and a repetition of the 20-min driving scenario driven in the reverse direction. Participants were periodically probed with auditory tones to self-report whether they were mind wandering or focused on the driving task. Self-reported mind wandering frequency was high, and did not statistically change over days of participation. For measures of driving performance, participant labeled periods of mind wandering were associated with reduced speed and reduced lane variability, in comparison to periods of on task performance. For measures of electrophysiology, periods of mind wandering were associated with increased power in the alpha band of the electroencephalogram (EEG), as well as a reduction in the magnitude of the P3a component of the event related potential (ERP) in response to the auditory probe. Results support that mind wandering has an impact on driving performance and the associated change in driver’s attentional state is detectable in underlying brain physiology. Further, results suggest that detecting the internal cognitive state of humans is possible in a continuous task such as automobile driving. Identifying periods of likely mind wandering could serve as a useful research tool for assessment of driver attention, and could potentially lead to future in-vehicle safety countermeasures.

Previous research suggests that being interrupted while reading a text does not disrupt the later recognition or recall of information from that text. This research is used as support for Ericsson and Kintsch's (1995) long-term working memory (LT-WM) theory, which posits that disruptions while reading (e.g., interruptions) do not impair subsequent text comprehension. However, to fully comprehend a text, individuals may need to do more than recognize or recall information that has been presented in the text at a later time. Reading comprehension often requires individuals to connect and synthesize information across a text (e.g., successfully identifying complex topics such as themes and tones) and not just make a familiarity-based decision (i.e., recognition). The goal for this study was to determine whether interruptions while reading disrupt reading comprehension when the questions assessing comprehension require participants to connect and synthesize information across the passage. In Experiment 1, interruptions disrupted reading comprehension. In Experiment 2, interruptions disrupted reading comprehension but not recognition of information from the text. In Experiment 3, the addition of a 15-s time-out prior to the interruption successfully removed these negative effects. These data suggest that the time it takes to process the information needed to successfully comprehend text when reading is greater than that required for recognition. Any interference (e.g., an interruption) that occurs during the comprehension process may disrupt reading comprehension. This evidence supports the need for transient activation of information in working memory for successful text comprehension and does not support LT-WM theory.

Long-term working memory (LT-WM; Ericsson and Kintsch, 1995) theory claims that the “transient portion of working memory is not necessary for continued comprehension” (pp. 225–226) and that “reading can be completely disrupted for over 30 s with no observable impairment of subsequent text comprehension” (p. 232). Follow-up research testing claims made by LT-WM report conflicting, indirect evidence for and against the theory. The goal for this research was to use individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) to provide support for or against the theory that activation of information in working memory is necessary for successful comprehension of text. By extension, this tests predictions made by Ericsson and Kintsch’s (1995) LT-WM theory. Thirty six participants with either high or low WMC (18 in each group) read prompts while interrupted or not interrupted (control), then answered recognition and comprehension questions. We found that interruptions disrupted both the recognition and comprehension of text following interrupted reading for individuals with low WMC, but not for individuals with high WMC. These results support the view that the activation of information in working memory is necessary for successful recognition and comprehension of information and argue against LT-WM theory. We also provide initial evidence that working memory capacity may have a greater effect for interrupted reading compared to uninterrupted reading.

Potential applications of the ARDES-US include identifying individuals who are at greater risk of attention-related errors while driving and suggesting individually tailored training and safety countermeasures.

Many studies have found gender differences in mental rotation ability in young adults when completing mental rotation tests on paper and pencil (e.g., Peters et al., 1995; Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). Two previous studies have been unable to replicate these findings when testing mental rotation ability inside of a virtual environment (Parsons et al., 2004; Rizzo et al., 2001). We created a new virtual mental rotation test (VMRT) based on a full, validated test of mental rotation ability (MRT-A; Peters et al., 1995) that 128 participants (79 females) completed while wearing an Oculus Rift DK1. Our data replicate previous findings of paper and pencil tests of mental rotation ability: men scored approximately one standard deviation higher ( d = .90) than women.