We examined the hypothesis that people can modulate their mind wandering on the basis of their expectations of upcoming challenges in a task. To this end, we developed a novel paradigm in which participants were presented with an analog clock, via a computer monitor, and asked to push a button every time the clock’s hand was pointed at 12:00. Importantly, the time at which the clock’s hand was pointed at 12:00 was completely predictable and occurred at 20-s intervals. During some of the 20-s intervals, we presented thought probes to index participants’ rates of mind wandering. Results indicated that participants decreased their levels of mind wandering as they approached the predictable upcoming target. Critically, these results suggest that people can and do modulate their mind wandering in anticipation of changes in task demands.
BairdB.SmallwoodJ.MrazekM. D.KamJ. W.FranklinM. S.SchoolerJ. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological Science, 23, 1117–1122.
2.
BlaisC.RobidouxS.RiskoE. F.BesnerD. (2007). Item-specific adaptation and the conflict-monitoring hypothesis: A computational model. Psychological Review, 114, 1076–1086.
3.
CasnerS. M.SchoolerJ. W. (2014). Thoughts in flight: Automation use and pilots’ task-related and task-unrelated thought. Human Factors, 56, 433–442.
4.
GorgolewskiK. J.LurieD.UrchsS.KippingJ. A.CraddockR. C.MilhamM. P.SmallwoodJ. (2014). A correspondence between individual differences in the brain’s intrinsic functional architecture and the content and form of self-generated thoughts. PLOS ONE, 9(5), Article e97176. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0097176
5.
JacobyL. L.LindsayD. S.HesselsS. (2003). Item-specific control of automatic processes: Stroop process dissociations. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 638–644.
6.
JingH. G.SzpunarK. K.SchacterD. L. (2016). Interpolated testing influences focused attention and improves integration of information during a video-recorded lecture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22, 305–318.
7.
KaneM. J.BrownL. H.McVayJ. C.SilviaP. J.Myin-GermeysI.KwapilT. R. (2007). For whom the mind wanders, and when: An experience-sampling study of working memory and executive control in daily life. Psychological Science, 18, 614–621.
8.
KaneM. J.GrossG. M.ChunC. A.SmeekensB. A.MeierM. E.SilviaP. J.KwapilT. R. (2017). For whom the mind wanders, and when, varies across laboratory and daily-life settings. Psychological Science, 28, 1271–1289.
9.
KlineR. B. (1998). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. New York, NY: Guilford.
10.
KnowlesD.TayR. (2002, November). Driver inattention: More risky than the fatal four?Paper presented at the Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference, Adelaide, Australia.
11.
McVayJ. C.KaneM. J. (2009). Conducting the train of thought: Working memory capacity, goal neglect, and mind wandering in an executive-control task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 196–204.
12.
McVayJ. C.KaneM. J. (2010). Does mind wandering reflect executive function or executive failure? Comment on Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). Psychological Bulletin, 136, 188–197.
13.
McVayJ. C.KaneM. J. (2012). Why does working memory capacity predict variation in reading comprehension? On the influence of mind wandering and executive attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 302–320.
14.
MooneyhamB. W.SchoolerJ. W. (2013). The costs and benefits of mind-wandering: A review. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 11–18.
15.
RalphB. C. W.SmilekD. (2017). Individual differences in media multitasking and performance on the n-back. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 79, 582–592. doi:10.3758/s13414-016-1260-y
16.
RobertsonI. H.ManlyT.AndradeJ.BaddeleyB. T.YiendJ. (1997). “Oops!”: Performance correlates of everyday attentional failures in traumatic brain injured and normal subjects. Neuropsychologia, 35, 747–758.
17.
SeliP.CheyneJ. A.XuM.PurdonC.SmilekD. (2015). Motivation, intentionality, and mind wandering: Implications for assessments of task-unrelated thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41, 1417–1425. doi:10.1037/xlm0000116
18.
SeliP.MailletD.SmilekD.OakmanJ. M.SchacterD. L. (2017). Cognitive aging and the distinction between intentional and unintentional mind wandering. Psychology and Aging, 32, 315–324.
19.
SeliP.RalphB. C.KonishiM.SmilekD.SchacterD. L. (2017). What did you have in mind? Examining the content of intentional and unintentional types of mind wandering. Consciousness and Cognition, 51, 149–156.
20.
SeliP.RiskoE. F.SmilekD. (2016). On the necessity of distinguishing between unintentional and intentional mind wandering. Psychological Science, 27, 685–691.
21.
SeliP.RiskoE. F.SmilekD.SchacterD. L. (2016). Mind-wandering with and without intention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 605–617.
22.
SeliP.SmallwoodJ.CheyneJ. A.SmilekD. (2015). On the relation of mind wandering and ADHD symptomatology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 629–636. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0793-0
23.
SimmonsJ. P.NelsonL. D.SimonsohnU. (2012). A 21 word solution. Dialogue, 26, 4–7.
24.
SmallwoodJ.RubyF. J.SingerT. (2013). Letting go of the present: Mind-wandering is associated with reduced delay discounting. Consciousness and Cognition, 22, 1–7.
25.
SmeekensB. A.KaneM. J. (2016). Working memory capacity, mind wandering, and creative cognition: An individual-differences investigation into the benefits of controlled versus spontaneous thought. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 10, 389–415.
26.
StawarczykD.MajerusS.MajM.Van der LindenM.D’ArgembeauA. (2011). Mind-wandering: Phenomenology and function as assessed with a novel experience sampling method. Acta Psychologica, 136, 370–381.
27.
SzpunarK. K.JingH. G.SchacterD. L. (2014). Overcoming overconfidence in learning from video-recorded lectures: Implications of interpolated testing for online education. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 3, 161–164.
28.
TempletonG. F. (2011). A two-step approach for transforming continuous variables to normal: Implications and recommendations for IS research. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 28, 41–58.
29.
ThomsonD. R.BesnerD.SmilekD. (2013). In pursuit of off-task thought: Mind wandering-performance trade-offs while reading aloud and color naming. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 360. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00360
30.
ThomsonD. R.BesnerD.SmilekD. (2015). A resource-control account of sustained attention: Evidence from mind-wandering and vigilance paradigms. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 82–96.
31.
ThomsonD. R.SmilekD.BesnerD. (2014). On the asymmetric effects of mind-wandering on levels of processing at encoding and retrieval. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 728–733.
32.
VannesteS.BaudouinA.BouazzaouiB.TaconnatL. (2016). Age-related differences in time-based prospective memory: The role of time estimation in the clock monitoring strategy. Memory, 24, 812–825.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
