For Whom the Mind Wanders, and When

Kane, Michael J.; Brown, Leslie H.; McVay, Jennifer C.; Silvia, Paul J.; Myin-Germeys, Inez; Kwapil, Thomas Richard

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01948.x

Cited by 827 publications

(426 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The frequency of mind wandering was lower than in research on its frequency in daily life (Kane et al, 2007;Kane et al, in press;Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010;Marcusson-Clavertz et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…The average person spends as much as a third of their waking life engaging in thought that is unrelated to the current activity (Kane et al, 2007;Kane et al, in press;Marcusson-Clavertz, Cardeña, & Terhune, 2016), a phenomenon known as mind wandering (Schooler et al, 2011;Smallwood & Schooler, 2015). Evidence suggests that during mind wandering, one's attention is coupled to task-independent thoughts and concomitantly dissociated from perceptual input, resulting in an attenuation of sensory processing (perceptual decoupling; (Barron, Riby, Greer, & Smallwood, 2011;Smallwood, Beach, Schooler, & Handy, 2008).…”

Section: Public Significance Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Time contracts and temporal precision declines when the mind wanders.

Terhune¹,

Croucher²,

Marcusson-Clavertz³

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Our perception of time varies considerably from moment to moment, but how this variability relates to endogenous fluctuations in attentional states has been neglected. Here, we tested the hypothesis that perceptual decoupling during spontaneous mind wandering episodes distorts interval timing. In two studies with different visual subsecond interval timing paradigms, participants judged their attentional state on a trial-by-trial basis. Mind wandering states were characterized by underestimation of temporal intervals and a decline in temporal discrimination. Further analyses suggested that temporal contraction during mind wandering, but not the decline in temporal discrimination, could be attributed in part to attentional lapses. By contrast, we did not find any robust evidence that metacognition pertaining to interval timing was altered during mind wandering states. These results highlight the role of transient fluctuations in attentional states in intraindividual variability in time perception and have implications for the perceptual consequences, behavioral markers, and costs and benefits, of mind wandering.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

Section: Public Significance Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time contracts and temporal precision declines when the mind wanders.

Terhune¹,

Croucher²,

Marcusson-Clavertz³

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…During this period of idleness, we found that internally generated momentary ruminative self-referent thoughts were causally influenced by the cognitive capacity to regulate negative mental representations in WM, associated with DLPFC neural activation. In fact, it has already been shown that increased WM performance relates to decreased mind wandering during daily life (e.g., Kane et al, 2007;McVay & Kane, 2010), and even predicts the regulation of thought and behavior (Kane & Engle, 2003). Indeed, an enhancement of the executive-control system to adequately combat interfering thoughts that are generated and maintained automatically, is related to decreased ruminative self-referent thoughts (McVay & Kane, 2010 , which states that cognitive control processes play a central and causal role in the relation between prefrontal neural activation and rumination.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nosce te ipsum – Socrates revisited? Controlling momentary ruminative self-referent thoughts by neuromodulation of emotional working memory

et al. 2013

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It becomes ever more evident that cognitive operations serve as fundamental mechanisms underlying higher order ruminative thoughts. In this sham controlled within subjects study, we performed anodal transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in 32 healthy participants. We tested the causal hypothesis that the relationship between DLPFC activity and ruminative thinking is mediated by working memory operations. We used the Internal Shift Task, a paradigm in which participants have to update and shift between specific (non)emotional representations in working memory. These findings suggest that enhancing cognitive self-regulation, by increasing the ability to update and shift away from negative representations in working memory, might help individuals to control unintentional streams of self-referent thoughts that are self-critical and self-evaluative, a thinking style known as rumination.205 words 3

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“…Its prototypical psychological signature features low arousal (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985;cf. Goetz, Frenzel, Hall, Nett, Pekrun, & Lipnevich, 2014), a lack of perceived meaning and challenge in the activity at hand (Van Tilburg, Igou, & Sedikides, 2013), mind-wandering (Kane, Brown, McVay, Silvia, Myin-Germeys, & Kwapil, 2007), low attention (Eastwood et al, 2012), and the desire to change the current activity or to disengage from it (Van Tilburg & Igou, 2012).…”

Section: From the Fringes Towards The Mainstreammentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Boring activities can lead to mind-wandering (Kane et al, 2007), or "stimulusindependent thought" (Killingsworth & Gillbert, 2010), due to a lack of engaging taskfeatures that should sustain a person's attention (Eastwood et al, 2012). To be clear, although boredom may often lead to mind-wandering, a wandering mind may not necessarily feel bored, for example when people daydream (Schupak & Rosenthal, 2009).…”

Section: Implications Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.

Tilburg¹,

Igou

2017

Emotion

144

171

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.The authors declare that there are no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. All authors consented to the submission of this manuscript. AbstractBoredom research is booming. Nonetheless, a comprehensive understanding of boredom in relation to other negative emotions is lacking. This ambiguity impedes accurate interpretation of boredom's causes and consequences. To gain more insights into boredom, we examined in detail how it differs from a range of other negative experiences, namely sadness, anger, frustration, fear, disgust, depression, guilt, shame, regret, and disappointment. Our research indicates that the appraisals associated with boredom distinguish it clearly from other negative emotions; conceptually (Study 1), in terms of state experiences (Study 2), and in terms of individual differences in these experiences (Study 3). Our findings suggest that boredom is mild in negative valence, low in arousal, is associated with low perceived challenge, low perceived meaningfulness, and has low relevance to moral judgment and behavior. Boredom also involves low attention given to situations and tasks, and the lack of perceived meaningfulness and attention associated with boredom emerged as particularly distinctive characteristics. The findings underscore the importance of carefully discriminating boredom from other emotions in experimental induction, psychometric assessment, and conceptual discussion.

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For Whom the Mind Wanders, and When

Cited by 827 publications

References 38 publications

Time contracts and temporal precision declines when the mind wanders.

Time contracts and temporal precision declines when the mind wanders.

Nosce te ipsum – Socrates revisited? Controlling momentary ruminative self-referent thoughts by neuromodulation of emotional working memory

Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.

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