Identifying eye-movement measures as objective indicators of mind wandering seems to be a work in progress. We reviewed research comparing eye movements during self-categorized episodes of normal versus mindless reading and found little consensus regarding the specific measures that are sensitive to attentional decoupling during mind wandering. To address this issue of inconsistency, we conducted a new, high-powered eye-tracking experiment and considered all previously identified mindwandering indicators. In our experiment, only three measures (reading time, fixation count, and first-fixation duration) positively predicted self-categorized mindless reading. Aside from these single measures, the word-frequency effect was found to be generally less pronounced during mindless-reading than during normal-reading episodes. To additionally test for convergent validity between the objective and subjective mind-wandering measures, we utilized eye-movement measures as well as thought reports, to examine the effect of metacognitive awareness on mind-wandering behavior. We expected that participants anticipating a difficult comprehension test would mind wander less during reading than would those anticipating an easy test. Although we were able to induce metacognitive expectancies about task difficulty, we found no evidence that these difficulty expectancies affected either subjectively reported or objectively measured mind wandering.

SummaryMind‐wandering is mostly studied for its negative effects on ongoing cognitive tasks but may be also of adaptive value. We tested the idea of mind‐wandering providing opportunities for rehearsal by asking participants to study 20 grocery items for a recall test. After cued recall of 10 items, participants were either told that the recall task was finished or that it was interrupted for another task. All participants then performed a two‐back task during which thought contents were repeatedly probed. Cued recall of the remaining items was better in the interrupted than in the finished condition, and this effect was accompanied by a more efficient rehearsal strategy: Participants' thought‐reports in the interrupted condition revealed a stronger and more persistent engagement in shopping‐task‐related thoughts. Activating a relevant goal led to mind‐wandering episodes being persistently used as opportunities for rehearsal revealing participants' adaptive usage of off‐task thoughts.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The present study was designed to conceptually replicate and to further test previous findings that have shown a beneficial influence of mind wandering during incubation phases on postincubation divergent-thinking performance. Additionally, online thought probes and the effects their occurrence might have on incubation thought processes were investigated. Participants worked on verbal and figural divergent-thinking tasks. In one condition, their thoughts were probed during an incubation interval, possibly interrupting and/or making aware creative thought processes. Participants in this condition retrospectively reported fewer thoughts concerning the divergent-thinking tasks compared to two other incubation conditions: that is, one without interruption and one interrupted by trivia questions. Divergent thinking did not differ between these three incubation conditions and all three incubation conditions achieved a similar performance as a no-incubation control condition. These results add to the ongoing discussion regarding the relationship between mind wandering and creativity by challenging the idea of mind-wandering states contributing to a creative-incubation process in divergent-thinking tasks.

The outbreak of a global pandemic such as COVID-19 poses a challenge for societies across the world. Lacking both vaccination and medical treatment, the only way to combat the spread of a virus in its early stages are behavioral measures, particularly physical distancing behavior. The present work proposes three pillars of individuals’ engagement in physical distancing: anxiety, prosociality, and rule compliance. In a large (N = 1,504), pre-registered study among German adults, we studied both situation-specific tendencies and stable personality traits that are theoretically associated with these pillars in relation to self-reported physical distancing behavior and underlying motives. Results supported the importance of each of the proposed pillars for physical distancing behavior. That is, for each pillar, we found (some) relations of the corresponding tendencies and personality traits with physical distancing (motives) as expected. Overall, the project provides a comprehensive picture of physical distancing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I. (in press). Stockpiling during the COVID-19 pandemic as a real-life social dilemma: A person-situation perspective.