Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective

Abstract

Mind wandering is a universal phenomenon in which our attention shifts away from the task at hand toward task-unrelated thoughts. Despite it inherently involving a shift in mental set, little is known about the role of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering. In this article we consider the potential of cognitive flexibility as a mechanism for mediating and/or regulating the occurrence of mind wandering. Our review begins with a brief introduction to the prominent theories of mind wandering—the executive failure hypothesis, the decoupling hypothesis, the process-occurrence framework, and the resource-control account of sustained attention. Then, after discussing their respective merits and weaknesses, we put forward a new perspective of mind wandering focused on cognitive flexibility, which provides an account more in line with the data to date, including why older populations experience a reduction in mind wandering. After summarizing initial evidence prompting this new perspective, drawn from several mind-wandering and task-switching studies, we recommend avenues for future research aimed at further understanding the importance of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering.

Commonalities Between Mind Wandering and Task Switching: An Event-Related Potential Study

“…The similar RTs for the trials leading up to mind-wandering versus on-task reports during task-switching performance (see Table 2, unshaded rows) provided further evidence to support our previous argument that when one mind wanders during performance of a taskswitching paradigm, they continue to engage in a "task-switching mind frame" (i.e., instead of switching between task-related mental sets, they switch between task-related and taskunrelated mental sets), and thereby can maintain task-switching performance (Wong et al, 2022a). Furthermore, partly in line with our second prediction, we found a main effect of thought-probe response at the Pz electrode, with higher mean P300 amplitude for selfreported mind-wandering switch trials than self-reported on-task switch trials.…”

“…We believe that exploring the similarities/differences in the electrophysiological signature associated with mind-wandering versus on-task switch trials may provide further insight into whether mind wandering promotes a mental set suited to the requirements of task-switching paradigms (Wong et al, 2022b). For example, if similar RTs are observed for mindwandering switch trials and on-task switch trials (behavioral results) but mind-wandering switch trials are found to be associated with higher P300 amplitude (ERP results), this would indicate that: despite self-reported mind-wandering switch trials requiring more revision of the representations and/or more executive control resources than self-reported on-task switch trials, the competition between task-unrelated and task-related mental sets is less intense, which could be attributable to participants being in a "task-switching mind frame" (Wong et al, 2022a).…”

“…MIND WANDERING AND TASK SWITCHING 5 While much event-related potentials (ERPs) evidence favors the abovementioned interpretation, we recently proposed a new perspective of mind wandering focused on cognitive flexibility, highlighting that the reduced P300 amplitude during mind wandering could also be interpreted from a switching perspective (Wong et al, 2022a). This conjecture was grounded on previous task-switching studies demonstrating that the P300 amplitude decreases on switch trials (i.e., trials where the task to be performed is different from the preceding trial) relative to repetition trials (i.e., trials where the task to be performed is the same as in the preceding trial; e.g., Barceló et al, 2002;Gajewski & Falkenstein, 2011;Hsieh & Liu, 2009;Poljac & Yeung, 2014;Vandamme et al, 2010).…”

“…Another explanation, provided by Jost et al (2008), suggests that the decreased P300 amplitude in switch trials may reflect that the comparison of the attributes of an incoming stimulus with an internal representation and/or the subsequent updating of the internal representation is less easily achieved. Building on these findings, Wong et al (2022a) postulated that the decreased P300 amplitude during mind wandering could reflect two possible processes: (a) competition between primary-task representations and task-unrelated thoughts, and/or (b) less efficient "context updating" in working memory (Donchin, 1981;Donchin & Coles, 1988).…”

“…In the current study, we investigated this gap in the literature in a group of young adults using a task-switching paradigm that contains blocks with either 25% switches or 50% switches. This variant of the task-switching paradigm (involving manipulation of taskswitching frequency) was used, rather than a typical task-switching paradigm involving a 50% switch frequency throughout (for a review, see Kiesel et al, 2010), because it has potential to help address whether instances of mind wandering are instances of mental set shifting (Wong et al, 2022a;see Murray & Krasich, 2022, for a similar argument). By way of background, previous studies using switch-frequency manipulations have consistently found that blocks with a higher proportion of switches were associated with smaller switch costs MIND WANDERING AND TASK SWITCHING 7 and P300 amplitudes (e.g., Siqi-Liu et al, 2022;Zhuo et al, 2021) in comparison to blocks with a lower proportion of switches, presumably because during performance of the higher switch proportion blocks, an increase in cognitive flexibility is triggered to facilitate task-set reconfiguration, resulting in less revision of the representations and/or less executive control resources needed.…”