Are you mind-wandering, or is your mind on task? The effect of probe framing on mind-wandering reports

Weinstein, Yana; Lima, Henry Joseph De; Zee, Tim van der

doi:10.3758/s13423-017-1322-8

Cited by 56 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Why might this framing matter? Indeed, as of right now no published data directly address how probe framing affects mindwandering reports (Weinstein et al, 2017). However, we might look to data from other domains in which framing has been manipulated.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Acquiescence bias One specific form of satisficing involves de facto agreeing with statements; this is known as Bacquiescence,^and it is particularly likely when participants are asked yes/no questions such as BAre you mindwandering?^or BIs your mind on task?^The size of the acquiescence bias observed in any given mind-wandering study is, of course, impossible to determine without a manipulation of the probe itself, but from previous research, we might expect a difference of about 10% (Krosnick & Presser, 2010). Thus, asking BAre you mind-wandering?^could bias participants toward higher rates of self-reported mind-wandering, which would presumably not reflect true differences in actual mind-wandering, relative to when the question is formulated as BIs your mind on task?^(see Weinstein, De Lima, & van der Zee, 2017).…”

Section: Optimizing Versus Satisficingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mind-wandering, how do I measure thee with probes? Let me count the ways

2017

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In the past decade, a new field has formed to investigate the concept of mind-wandering, or task-unrelated thought. The state of mind-wandering is typically contrasted with being on-task, or paying attention to the task at hand, and is related to decrements in performance on cognitive tasks. The most widely used method for collecting mind-wandering data-the probe-caught method-involves stopping participants during a task and asking them where their attention is directed. In this review, 145 studies from 105 articles published between 2005 and 2015 were classified according to the framing and wording of the thought probe and response options. Five distinct methodologies were identified: neutral (in which counterbalancing was used to equally emphasize on-task and off-task states), dichotomous (say "yes" or "no" to one thought state), dichotomous (choose between two thought states), categorical, and scale. The review identifies at least 69 different methodological variants, catalogues the verbatim probes and response options used in each study, and suggests important considerations for future empirical work.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Optimizing Versus Satisficingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mind-wandering, how do I measure thee with probes? Let me count the ways

2017

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“…Another possibility is national differences in acceptability of deviations from task‐conform behaviour. Recently, researchers have begun to look more closely into boundary conditions of the thought probe technique (Weinstein, ; Weinstein, De Lima, & van der Zee, ). This finding is a first indication that it may be important to consider language‐ or nationality‐specific effects as well.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing propensity to mind‐wander by transcranial direct current stimulation? A registered report

Boayue

Csifcsák

Aslaksen

et al. 2019

Eur J of Neuroscience

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Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been proposed to be able to modulate different cognitive functions. However, recent meta‐analyses conclude that its efficacy is still in question. Recently, an increase in subjects’ propensity to mind‐wander has been reported as a consequence of anodal stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Axelrod et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112, 2015). In addition, an independent group found a decrease in mind wandering after cathodal stimulation of the same region. These findings seem to indicate that high‐level cognitive processes such as mind wandering can reliably be influenced by non‐invasive brain stimulation. However, these previous studies used low sample sizes and are as such subject to concerns regarding the replicability of their findings. In this registered report, we implement a high‐powered replication of Axelrod et al. (2015) finding that mind‐wandering propensity can be increased by anodal tDCS. We used Bayesian statistics and a preregistered sequential‐sampling design resulting in a total sample size of N = 192 participants collected across three different laboratories. Our findings show support against a stimulation effect on self‐reported mind‐wandering scores. The effect was small, in the opposite direction as predicted and not reliably different from zero. Using a Bayes Factor specifically designed to test for replication success, we found strong evidence against a successful replication of the original study. Finally, even when combining data from both the original and replication studies, we could not find evidence for an effect of anodal stimulation. Our results underline the importance of designing studies with sufficient power to detect evidence for or against behavioural effects of non‐invasive brain stimulation techniques, preferentially using robust Bayesian statistics in preregistered reports.

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“…Some of these specific features might have had an influence on the assessment of mind wandering and the eye-movement behavior. For example, differences in reported mind wandering can arise due to the framing and wording of thought probes and response options (Weinstein, 2018;Weinstein, De Lima, & van der Zee, 2018). Additionally, eye-movement behavior might have been influenced by the length of the experiment (e.g., due to fatigue) or by the lexical input (e.g., single sentences vs. full text).…”

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confidence: 99%

Do your eyes give you away? A validation study of eye-movement measures used as indicators for mindless reading

Steindorf

Rummel

2019

Behav Res

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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.

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Are you mind-wandering, or is your mind on task? The effect of probe framing on mind-wandering reports

Cited by 56 publications

References 19 publications

Mind-wandering, how do I measure thee with probes? Let me count the ways

Mind-wandering, how do I measure thee with probes? Let me count the ways

Increasing propensity to mind‐wander by transcranial direct current stimulation? A registered report

Do your eyes give you away? A validation study of eye-movement measures used as indicators for mindless reading

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