The Role of Spontaneous Thoughts in Human Cognition

Abstract

Spontaneous thought is a cognitive process that ubiquitously happens in daily life. Humans spend 30-50% of their lives in spontaneous thinking, but the impact and consequence of spontaneous thought have not been widely studied in cognitive neuroscience. It is crucial to expand the research involving spontaneous thought since it benefits human's memory encoding and decision-making abilities. This review has two main aims: the first is to explore the cognitive impact of goal-directed and spontaneous thought; the second is to discover the benefits of spontaneous thought to humans. This paper concludes that spontaneous thought has the role of improving memory encoding and facilitating future planning.