This article investigates the relation between mind wandering and the spacing effect in inductive learning. Participants studied works of art by different artists grouped in blocks, where works by a particular artist were either presented all together successively (the massed condition), or interleaved with the works of other artists (the spaced condition). The works of 24 artists were shown, with 12, 15, or 18 works by each artist being provided as exemplars. Later, different works by the same artists were presented for a test of the artists' identity. During the course of studying these works, participants were probed for mind wandering. It was found that people mind wandered more when the exemplars were presented in a massed rather than in a spaced manner, especially as the task progressed. There was little mind wandering and little difference between massed and spaced conditions toward the beginning of study. People were better able to correctly attribute the new works to the appropriate artist (inductive learning) when (a) they were in the spaced condition and (b) they had not been mind wandering. This research suggests that inductive learning may be influenced by mind wandering and that the impairment in learning with massed practice (compared to spaced practice) may be attributable, at least in part, to attentional factors-people are "on task" less fully when the stimuli are massed rather than spaced. (PsycINFO Database Record
Insofar as mind wandering has been linked to poor learning, finding ways to reduce the propensity to mind wander should have implications for improving learning. We investigated the possibility that studying materials at an appropriate level of difficulty with respect to the individual's capabilities-that is, studying in the region of proximal learning (RPL)-might reduce mind wandering. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were probed for their attentional state while they studied blocks of English-Spanish word pairs that were (a) easy, (b) in the RPL, or (c) difficult. We found that studying materials in the RPL was associated with reduced mind wandering. Test performance on items studied while mind wandering was also poorer. In Experiment 3, we investigated the relation between differences in participants' mastery and mind wandering. We found that high performers mind wandered more when studying the easier word pairs, whereas low performers mind wandered more when studying the difficult items. These results indicate that the RPL is specific to the individual's level of mastery and that mind wandering occurs when people are outside that region.
Mind wandering reduces both the sensory and cognitive processing of affectively neutral stimuli, but whether it also modulates the processing of affectively salient stimuli remains unclear. In particular, we examined whether mind wandering attenuates one's sensitivity to observing mild pain in others. In the first experiment, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) as participants viewed images of hands in either painful or neutral situations, while being prompted at random intervals to report whether their thoughts were on task or mind wandering. We found that the brain's later response to painful images was significantly reduced immediately preceding "mind-wandering" versus "on-task" reports, as measured via amplitude decreases in a frontal-central positivity beginning approximately 300 ms poststimulus. In a second, control experiment using behavioral measures, we wanted to confirm whether the subjective sense of pain observed in others does in fact decrease during mind wandering. Accordingly, we asked participants to rate how painful the hand images looked on a 5-point Likert scale, again while taking reports of their mind-wandering states at unpredictable intervals. Consistent with our ERP data, we found that the ratings for painful images were significantly reduced immediately preceding mind-wandering reports. Additional control analyses suggested that the effect could not simply be ascribed to general habituation in the affective response to painful images over time. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that mind wandering can directly modulate the cortical processing of affectively salient stimulus inputs, serving in this case to reduce sensitivity to the physical discomfort of others.
Three experiments investigated the effects of making errors oneself, as compared to just hearing the correct answer without error generation, hearing another person make an error, or being Bon-the-hook,^that is, possibly but not necessarily being the person who would be Bcalled-on^to give a response. In all three experiments, generating either an error of commission or generating the correct response, oneself, out loud, compared to being a person who heard another's commission errors (or correct responses), was beneficial for later recall of the correct answer. Experiment 1 suggested that the decrement in recall from self-to other-generation could be partially offset by being Bon-the-hook.^However, this benefit was fragile and did not hold up either at a delay or when the presence of the other participants was downplayed. The beneficial effect of self-generation, both of correct responses and of errors of commission is consistent with reconsolidation theory. That theory holds that retrieval has a special status as a memory process that renders the retrieved traces labile. If the person was correct, reconsolidating the correct trace results in strengthening. If wrong, the malleability of the retrieved trace implied by reconsolidation theory makes it open to enhanced modification and correction. If the person was not the agent who retrieved, though, such as when someone else retrieves information, or when nothing is retrieved as is the case with omission errors (which we argue is truly how the term Bunsuccessful retrieval^should be used), the benefit conferred by the special malleability entailed by the postulated reconsolidation process does not obtain.
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