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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Science
Volume 15 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1448226
Mind Wandering on Command
Provisionally accepted- 1 University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
- 2 Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States
- 3 University of Exeter, Exeter, England, United Kingdom
Three experiments (N = 336) examined whether participants can systematically adjust levels of mind wandering on command. Participants performed four blocks of the metronome response task (MRT) in which they pressed a spacebar in sync with a steady audio tone. Levels of spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering were measured using intermittent thought probes. Performance was indexed with MRT response time variability and omission errors. Each block started with instructions to mind wander either 20, 40, 60, or 80 percent of the time. Analysis was primarily conducted using linear mixed effects models. We found that mind wandering (spontaneous and deliberate), response time variability, and omission errors increased progressively with instructions to mind wander more and that these instruction-related changes were larger for deliberate than spontaneous mind wandering (Experiments 1 to 3). This pattern held regardless of whether participants' eyes were open or shut (Experiment 2). Relative to a control group receiving no commands to mind wander, instructing people to mind wander 60 or 80 percent of the time led to more deliberate mind wandering, and strikingly, asking people to mind wander 20 percent of the time led to less spontaneous mind wandering (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that individuals can titrate mind wandering experiences to roughly match instructed levels indicating that mind wandering can be manipulated through simple instructions. However, other features of the data suggest that such titration is effortful and may come with a cost to performance.
Keywords: Attention, mind-wandering, sustained attention, thought control, executive control, experience sampling
Received: 13 Jun 2024; Accepted: 23 Aug 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Safati, Carr, Lowe and Smilek. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Adrian B. Safati, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
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