When there is noise on Sherlock Holmes: mind wandering increases with perceptual processing difficulty during reading and listening

Abstract

We investigated whether increased perceptual processing difficulty during reading or listening to a Sherlock Holmes novella impacts mind wandering as well as text comprehension. We presented 175 participants with a novella in either a visual or an auditory presentation format and probed their thoughts and motivational states from time to time during reading/listening. For half of the participants in each presentation-format condition (visual or auditory), the story was superimposed by Gaussian noise. For both presentation formats, the participants who were exposed to noise while processing the story mind-wandered more and performed worse in a later comprehension test than the participants who processed the story without added noise. These negative effects of increased perceptual processing difficulty on task focus and comprehension were partly driven by motivational factors: reading/listening motivation mediated the relationship between perceptual processing difficulty and mind wandering.

A Longitudinal Framework to Describe the Relation Between Age-Related Hearing Loss and Social Isolation

“…The core layer includes immediate family and care givers, the secondary layer includes friends and other important contacts (e.g., coworkers, neighbors), and the tertiary layer includes acquaintances and less significant contacts ( Kahn & Antonucci, 1980 ). Age-related vision loss appears to adversely affect social relationships in the tertiary layer, but not in the other two layers ( Wahl et al, 2013 ). Whether age-related hearing loss also affects layers differentially is currently unclear, but highly relevant to developing interventions.…”

“…Three different layers associated with social network size have been proposed: Core network, secondary network, tertiary network ( Kahn & Antonucci, 1980 ). Age-related vision loss appears to specifically reduce the tertiary network, but not the core and secondary networks ( Wahl et al, 2013 ). Whether age-related hearing loss leaves core and secondary networks intact is unknown.…”

“…Less work has focused on within-situation disengagement and social withdrawal (but see Gfeller et al, 2019 ; Heffernan et al, 2016 ). As with social withdrawal, the biggest impact of hearing loss on an individual's social interactions may be at the most peripheral, tertiary level of relationships, whereas the core level of an individual's social network, including immediate family and care givers, may be much less affected ( Figure 1 ; Wahl et al, 2013 ). At this stage, individuals may consider it more adaptive to focus on quality over the quantity of social interactions ( Carstensen et al, 1999 ).…”

“…The three layers of social networks depicted in Figure 1 ( Kahn & Antonucci, 1980 ) may be differentially affected at different anchor stages and this requires further research. Vision impairment appears to affect mainly the most superficial network of acquaintances and thus the least significant social contacts ( Wahl et al, 2013 ). Whether this is also the case for hearing loss is unknown.…”