“I Should not Forget the Apples!”—Mind‐Wandering Episodes Used as Opportunities for Rehearsal in an Interrupted Recall Paradigm

Abstract

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.

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

“…We also recommend using multilevel models in future research. In addition to their general advantages (see the Results section), they allow for the specific modeling of time-on-task effects that are often found for mind-wandering behavior (e.g., Foulsham et al, 2013;McVay & Kane, 2009;Rummel & Nied, 2017;Steindorf & Rummel, 2017). As a result, the effects of the variables of interest can be examined while controlling for systematic changes due solely to time on task.…”

“…In our case, eye-movement measures and thought-probe responses were nested in target sentences and participants. Second, because mind wandering is known to become more likely, the more time is spent on a task (e.g., Foulsham et al, 2013;McVay & Kane, 2009;Rummel & Nied, 2017;Steindorf & Rummel, 2017), we also considered time on task as an additional predictor. Because, analogously to previous studies, a strong time-on-task effect was apparent in the present data, we decided, although this step was not preregistered, to detrend the present data (i.e., to remove the trend from a time series; Wang & Maxwell, 2015;Wu, Huang, Long, & Peng, 2007).…”

“…TUTs are often future-related and focus on unfulfilled tasks or personal problems. In this way, they might help people plan future actions (Klinger, 1999;Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013), come up with creative ideas (Baird et al, 2012; but see Smeekens & Kane, 2016), or keep future task goals active (Steindorf & Rummel, 2017). Given these potential positive effects, and considering the context-regulation hypothesis (Smallwood & Andrews-Hanna, 2013), efficient adjustment should allow people to benefit from TUTs as long as the situation allows or encourages it, while also minimizing the costs of mind wandering when working on demanding tasks.…”

The Electrophysiological Signature of Mind Wandering

“…Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013). Recent studies identified planning (Baumeister & Masicampo, 2010;D'Argembeau et al, 2011;Smallwood et al, 2009) and the fulfillment of intentions Seli et al, 2018b;Steindorf & Rummel, 2017) as potentially adaptive functionalities of mind wandering. According to a recent framework of Kurzban et al (2013), the human cognitive resource management system will reallocate cognitive resources that are not absolutely necessary for adequate performance in a given task to another task in order to maximize the combined utility.…”

On the Nature of Everyday Prospection: A Review and Theoretical Integration of Research on Mind-Wandering, Future Thinking, and Prospective Memory

“…Up until very recently, research on these topics and on prospective memory have been developing virtually independently from each other. However, initial findings indicate some interesting links between them both at behavioral and neural levels (Gonen-Yaakovi & Burgess, 2012; Kvavilashvili et al, 2020; Steindorf & Rummel, 2017; Ward, 2016) that urgently need to be discussed. In so doing, we hope to obtain theoretical clarity about the nature of the phenomena studied in these areas and assess the extent to which they may be similar to or different from each other (cf.…”