Mind wandering is
manifested in several forms, such as daydreaming and distracted thought, and has
an array of putative effects, both negative and positive. This week’s readings
examine some of the key consequences of mind wandering, from fostering creativity
to encouraging forgetfulness. I found this week’s readings very interesting as
they provided a broad sample of the different viewpoints on the ramifications
of mind wandering. In particular, I found the concept presented in Killingsworth’s
2010 review intriguing, as it’s the first time (in this class) that a
paper examined the effects of mind wandering on emotion. To begin, we present a
brief summary of the readings, with particular focus on their main points and
experiments. We then proceed with a questions and comments section in which
concerns regarding the methods and result interpretation will be presented. We
conclude with a section on links to neuroscience and possible future
experiments.
Summary and Comparative Analysis: The Negatives and
Positives of Mind Wandering
Killingsworth and Gilbert’s review
suggests that mind wandering comes at an “emotional cost,” namely unhappiness.
Through analyzing data on 2250 adults’ “happiness level,” corresponding mind
wandering degree, and the content matter of the daydreams/TUTs, Killingsworth
found three consistent phenomena: 1) mind wandering occurs frequently,
regardless of the primary task, save for intercourse; 2) people were “less
happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not;” and 3) the
content matter of the daydreams/TUTs were a better indicator of the person’s
mood than their primary task. Ultimately, the authors conclude that although
mind wandering may be important for essential tasks such as planning and
reasoning, it comes at an emotional cost.
Yep, they’re
back. Here, they examine the mediating role that mind wandering plays in the
relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and reading comprehension
through the lens of the executive-attention theory of WMC. Briefly, this view
maintains that WMC is indicative of “complex cognitive abilities,” as both are
defined by individual differences in control
of attention. Based on their study on individual differences in reading
comprehension and corresponding working memory capacity, the authors suggest
the relationship between WMC and reading comprehension is at least partly
attributable to these differences in attention control. Moreover, mind wandering is proposed as a manifestation of a “lapse of attention control” and shown
to be a causal factor in the impairment of reading comprehension. Results
indicated that the TUTs did indeed mediate the association between WMC and
reading comprehension, an outcome that motivated the authors to conclude that
successful reading comprehension is a result of attentional control over
thought content.
Delaney did an
interesting study on the amnesic effects
of daydreaming. He proposes that daydreaming induces a context shift that
result in the forgetting of some information that may be incompatible with that
context shift. This “context change
account” provides an explanation for the diversion paradigm that he
references. Thus, in accordance with this theory, Delaney predicted that the
degree of contextual change should be directly correlated with the degree of
forgetting. To test this, he performed an experiment in which participants were
asked to memorize two lists, with a diversionary thought sandwiched in between
these two tasks. Results indicated participants who engaged in diversionary
thought exhibited a greater degree of forgetting compared to the control group.
Furthermore, even within the “experimental group,” subjects who were asked to
engage in further-removed thoughts compared to their current reality (such as
vacation in Jamaica) manifested a greater degree of forgetting than those who
were asked to engage in thoughts closer to their reality (such as places near
their home). The authors interpreted these results as an indication that mind
wandering induces amnesic effects.
This study used
an incubation paradigm to examine the effect of mind wandering on creativity.
Specifically, The effect of a demanding task and an undemanding task (which was
assumed to allow for maximum mind wandering) on subjects’ performance on
“validated creativity problems,” or Unusual Uses Tasks (UUTs), was assessed.
The authors found incubation periods with higher levels of mind wandering were
those that led to the greatest improvements in performance on UUTs. This result
was interpreted as an indication that mind wandering can promote creativity in
problem solving.
DEEPER ANALYSIS: QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
I found this
week’s articles to be some of the most exciting so far topic-wise, especially
the studies of Delaney and Killingsworth.
However, I do have several questions and take issue with several of the methods
employed and conclusions drawn. For instance, in Delaney’s 2009 study, I found the definition of “forgetting” was
employed very loosely. His main argument is based on the finding that
participants exhibited a greater degree of forgetting after engaging in a
diversionary task. However, it is possible that the subjects didn’t really
assimilate the items/words on the list into memory in the first place.
Furthermore, there was no rigorous measure to take into account subjects’
different working memory capacities. This is a case in which WMC would have
been a compelling parameter. The authors also go on to reference the default
network and studies that show daydreams that produce “rapid forgetting.” Again,
“forgetting” implies that the subject had already memorized something, and
given the complex nature of memory and learning, the assumption that subjects
could commit a list of items appearing every 5 seconds to memory is not
compelling.
Furthermore, I
took a similar tissue with Baird’s creative
incubation study. Although I think the topic matter is very interesting and can
have a lot of potential given more rigorous testing parameters, I can’t help
but feel like he took too large of a leap from his experimental finding (subjects
performed better when the incubation period allowed for mind wandering) to his
conclusion (mind wandering facilitates creative problem solving). Maybe the
improvement in performance was due to the fact that subjects in the undemanding
incubation task category was better rested and thus more mentally prepared for
the task. As for Killingsworth’s study,
I found the results very surprising. Although the origins and exact function of
mind wandering is still debated and there exists no conclusive answer, it would
make sense that it served some kind of important function in one’s daily life.
Indeed, as Killingsworth notes in the beginning, many researchers believe mind
wandering to be the default mode of the mind. Although I don’t entirely agree
with this viewpoint, and I think mind wandering clearly has both negative and
positive sequences, I was surprised that something as important and central as
emotion was negatively affected by mind wandering. Again, while I find the
results of this study intriguing, I don’t think the methods are entirely sound.
Due to the nature of data collection utilized, the analysis and results were
reliant upon self-reports by subjects. This poses clear problems, which were
elaborated upon in previous posts, from inconsistency to possible dishonesty,
to the even more troubling self-selection. Even though the questions popped up
at random times, it is foreseeable that an extremely busy/angry/excited subject
would not have the time or be in the mood to submit answers.
Lastly, with the
exception of Killingsworth’s review, the papers we read for this week all
focused on either advantages or disadvantages of mind wandering. Although I
think more rigorous studies are necessary to establish the authors’ respective
contentions, I would not be surprised if mind wandering exhibited both the
positive and negative aspects mentioned in this weeks’ papers. Situation and
context are both extremely important in determining one’s mood and actions, and
it is foreseeable that mind wandering can serve different purposes in different
situations. Furthermore, along the same line of thinking, it can also impose
positive benefits (such as during the potential facilitation of creative
problem solving—maybe Homer’s Muses appeared to him during mind wandering episodes?)
as well as negative inflictions (mind wandering while driving on a highway
comes to mind…). Furthermore, there are clearly so many more unexplored
advantages and disadvantages of mind wandering. I would be interested to
investigate the effects of mind wandering in alleviating pain and emotional
escapism.
LINKS TO NEUROSCIENCE
Several of this week’s papers
investigated or referenced the relationship between mind wandering and memory.
I’ve been researching a memory-related hypothesis for the past two years, so I
was especially interested in the association mentioned between mind wandering
and memory. I know that a definitive answer is difficult to obtain, but it
would be interesting to make a mouse model to study the relationship between
mind wandering and memory. For instance, we can separate mice into distinct
settings. The control group could be placed in an enriched condition in which
mice have minimal opportunity to “mind wander,” whereas the experimental group
could be placed in an environment with minimal stimulation and thus have
maximum opportunity to mind wander. We can then examine the growth of new
synapses and growth of dendritic spines in the pyramidal neurons of the CA1
region of the hippocampus. If mind wandering does negatively impact memory, we
would expect to see greater synaptic growth in the first condition. There are
clear difficulties that have to be overcome and variables controlled for. For
instance, it is known that enriched environments are conducive to synaptic
growth. Furthermore, mind wandering may not be transferrable to mice and even
if so, may not operate in a similar fashion, and thus the results may not be
generalized to humans without further analysis.
Drumroll
Please…
This
post is under 1600 words!! (Not counting references…)
References
Killingsworth, M. A. and D. T. Gilbert
(2010). "A
wandering mind is an unhappy mind."
Science 330(6006): 932.
McVay, J. C. and M. J. Kane (2011).
"Why does working
memory capacity predict
attention." J Exp Psychol Gen.
Delaney, P. F., L. Sahakyan, et al.
(2010). "Remembering
to forget: The amnesic effect of
daydreaming." Psychol Sci 21(7): 1036-1042.
Baird, B., J. Smallwood, et al. (2012). “Inspired by distraction:
Mind Wandering facilitates
creative incubation.” Psychol Sci.
Image
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Accessed 06/03/2013.
Frequently Asked Questions. http://www.montgomeryserves.org/frequently-asked-questions.
Accessed 06/03/2013.
Fanhop. http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/egomouse/images/16282072/title/cute-mouse-found-on-internet-d-photo.
Accessed 07/03/2013.
Graduate Studies in Neuroscience
(MSc/PhD). http://www.uleth.ca/artsci/neuroscience/graduate-studies-neuroscience-mscphd.
Accessed 07/03/2013.
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