Journal ArticleDOI
The costs and benefits of mind-wandering: a review
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
Recent studies have shown that mind-wandering may play a crucial role in both autobiographical planning and creative problem solving, thus providing at least two possible adaptive functions of the phenomenon.Abstract:
Substantial evidence suggests that mind-wandering typically occurs at a significant cost to performance. Mind-wandering-related deficits in performance have been observed in many contexts, most notably reading, tests of sustained attention, and tests of aptitude. Mind-wandering has been shown to negatively impact reading comprehension and model building, impair the ability to withhold automatized responses, and disrupt performance on tests of working memory and intelligence. These empirically identified costs of mind-wandering have led to the suggestion that mind-wandering may represent a pure failure of cognitive control and thus pose little benefit. However, emerging evidence suggests that the role of mind-wandering is not entirely pernicious. Recent studies have shown that mind-wandering may play a crucial role in both autobiographical planning and creative problem solving, thus providing at least two possible adaptive functions of the phenomenon. This article reviews these observed costs and possible functions of mind-wandering and identifies important avenues of future inquiry.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Manual motor reaction while being absorbed into popular music.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the behavioral consequences of being absorbed into music on performance in a concurrent task and found that being absorbed in music can have the behavioral consequence of speeded manual reactions in specific task contexts.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Theory of Positive Disintegration as Future-Oriented Psychology
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration (TPD) as a future-oriented psychology theory, which is characterized by a transition from narrow to a broad understanding of reality, involving the capacity for reflecting on one's past history (retrospection) and for envisaging future of one's personal growth (prospection).
Self-generated thoughts as predictors of depressive symptoms among university students
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the predictive role and prevalence of self-generated thoughts (daydreaming) on depressive symptoms among university students, and found that selfgenerated thoughts were more common in females (35.08±11.24) than males (32.95±10.54).
Book ChapterDOI
Poetry, meaning making, and mind wandering
TL;DR: Based on my experience as a poet and on my scientific background as a creativity researcher, this paper proposed a theory of the psychological dynamics involved in the creation of poetry, which suggests that at the moment of facing a writing task, the poet must deal with three working spaces for creative problem-solving: the internal world, the poetic tradition, and originality.
Journal ArticleDOI
Degraded States of Engagement in Air Traffic Control
TL;DR: In this article , the authors surveyed 150 French en route air traffic controllers on the causes of and impacts on perceived cooperation, safety, and performance of seven degraded attentional states from the literature: task-related and task-unrelated mind wandering, mental overload, inattentional deafness and blindness, attentional entropy, and perseveration.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research.
TL;DR: The basic theme of the review is that eye movement data reflect moment-to-moment cognitive processes in the various tasks examined.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
TL;DR: The iPhone Hap App reveals that wandering thoughts lead to unhappiness and that doing so typically makes people unhappy.
Journal ArticleDOI
'Oops!': performance correlates of everyday attentional failures in traumatic brain injured and normal subjects
TL;DR: It is shown that errors on the SART can be predicted by a significant shortening of reaction times in the immediately preceding responses, supporting the view that these errors are a result of 'drift' of controlled processing into automatic responding consequent on impaired sustained attention to task.
Journal ArticleDOI
The restless mind
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review the hypothesis that mind-wandering can be integrated into standard executive models of attention and show that it often occurs in the absence of explicit intention.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering
TL;DR: Cultivating mindfulness is an effective and efficient technique for improving cognitive function, with wide-reaching consequences, and improves both GRE reading-comprehension scores and working memory capacity.