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Meta-awareness, perceptual decoupling and the wandering mind
Abstract
Mind wandering (i.e. engaging in cognitions unrelated to the current demands of the external environment) reflects the cyclic activity of two core processes: the capacity to disengage attention from perception (known as perceptual decoupling) and the ability to take explicit note of the current contents of consciousness (known as meta-awareness). Research on perceptual decoupling demonstrates that mental events that arise without any external precedent (known as stimulus independent thoughts) often interfere with the online processing of sensory information. Findings regarding meta-awareness reveal that the mind is only intermittently aware of engaging in mind wandering. These basic aspects of mind wandering are considered with respect to the activity of the default network, the role of executive processes, the contributions of meta-awareness and the functionality of mind wandering.
... We use the term 'cognitive-affective' to emphasize the interplay between mind-wandering and negative affect during task interference. Mind-wandering involves engagement in thoughts unrelated to the current demands of the external environment (also referred to as off-task thinking) 92,93 and is well known to interfere with ongoing task performance 56,94 . It can be either entirely self-generated (for instance, "I've just remembered I have my medical appointment this afternoon") or task-related (for instance, "This task is so boring; I'd rather be walking in the park"). ...
... Not all mind-wandering is associated with negative mood or is necessarily maladaptive [104][105][106][107][108] . Nevertheless, when performing tasks that require executive control, the presence of mind-wandering impairs performance 56,94 , with negatively valenced mind-wandering being the most sticky (difficult to disengage from) 109 and disruptive form 98,110,111 . Furthermore, laboratory assessments of executive control are typically experienced as effortful and aversive 22,112,113 , which makes these tasks themselves a source of affective interference. ...
... Nonetheless, the emergence of cognitive-affective interference during task performance can also explain the phenomenon to some extent. In particular, off-task processes will compete for and divert resources that would otherwise be invested in task-relevant perceptual processing (a process known as 'perceptual decoupling') 56 and task goal maintenance (known as 'goal neglect') 176 , thus constraining the efficiency with which inhibitory control can be used and ultimately resulting in performance costs. Improved performance on a flanker task as a result of mindfulness training could therefore reflect an improvement in attentional inhibitory control or a decrease in the prevalence of cognitive-affective interference (hypothesized to occur via network and state training mechanisms, respectively). ...
Mindfulness meditation has drawn increasing attention in psychological research over the past two decades, including growing interest in its potential cognitive benefits. Meta-analytic evidence suggests that mindfulness training might improve cognitive performance, but the mechanisms underlying these benefits have not been fully characterised. In this Perspective, we integrate empirical and theoretical advances in mindfulness research with established knowledge about the mechanisms and limitations of cognitive training. We introduce the capacity-efficiency mindfulness (CEM) framework, which posits that mindfulness training modulates cognitive function by minimizing cognitive-affective interference during task performance, rather than by increasing overall cognitive resources. This framework emphasises the critical role of mind-wandering and negative affect in disrupting efficient cognitive control and outlines key mechanisms by which mindfulness training might mitigate these factors. We review initial evidence in support of the framework, discuss its predictions and suggest future research directions to test them.
... To maintain stable visual performance in response to the inherent instability of the visual system, accurate metacognitive monitoring of current visual performance may be crucial (Flavell, 1979;Fleming & Dolan, 2012;Schooler et al., 2011). For example, introspective awareness of performance decrements enables timely self-regulation (i.e., metacognitive control), such as attentional control, breaks, and helpseeking. ...
... Despite a large body of literature on the metacognitive monitoring of visual performance (Katyal & Fleming, 2024;Rahnev et al., 2022), little is currently known about whether and how metacognitive monitoring of visual performance is performed in the context of sustained attention. Recently, sustained attention research has begun to question whether observers can accurately monitor their own attentional states (e.g., mind wandering) regarding the validity of self-report methods (Schooler et al., 2011;Seli et al., 2015). Indeed, sustained attention research often measures observers' attentional states using self-report methods (e.g., asked "How engaged were you with the task?"), such as thought probes and retrospective reports (Pereira et al., 2023;Smallwood & Schooler, 2015), presuming accurate metacognitive monitoring of attentional states. ...
... However, it is possible that, with longer time limits, factors other than the quality of target perception can be monitored and considered when making confidence judgments. Another possibility is that direct instructions to focus on a specific factor as a task (e.g., when participants are directly asked to report their own attentional states) enable the monitoring of that factor (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977;Schooler et al., 2011). Future research is required to investigate what conditions encourage observers to use process monitoring and which neurocognitive factors are metacognitively monitorable. ...
The performance of the human visual system exhibits moment-to-moment fluctuations influenced by multiple neurocognitive factors. To deal with this instability of the visual system, introspective awareness of current visual performance (metacognitive monitoring) may be crucial. In this study, we investigate whether and how people can monitor their own visual performance during sustained attention by adopting confidence judgments as indicators of metacognitive monitoring – assuming that if participants can monitor visual performance, confidence judgments will accurately track performance fluctuations. In two experiments (N = 40), we found that participants were able to monitor fluctuations in visual performance during sustained attention. Importantly, metacognitive monitoring largely relied on the quality of target perception, a product of visual processing (“I lack confidence in my performance because I only caught a glimpse of the target”), rather than the states of the visual system during visual processing (“I lack confidence because I was not focusing on the task").
... Beyond these suggestive findings, however, little research has directly considered the neurochemistry of self--generated thought. Although investigation of the neurochemical determinants and correlates of self--generated thought therefore remains a largely unexplored field of research, promising avenues of research are suggested by investigations of the neurochemistry of several related cognitive processes (Christoff et al., 2011). The first is dreaming, which (as explained above) we view as self--generated thought ...
... Complementary hypotheses can be derived from studies of the neurochemistry of creative thought. The similarities in terms of content, cognitive process, and neurophysiological recruitment between self--generated thought and creativity are discussed in detail elsewhere (Christoff et al., 2011, Ellamil et al., 2012, Fox and Christoff, 2014, Beaty et al., 2015; the salient point for us here is that these several similarities make the neurochemistry of creative thought potentially informative. Probably the most reliable finding from such research is that decreasing levels of arousal--heightening neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, appears to be beneficial for creative thinking (Beversdorf et al., 1999, Heilman et al., 2003, Silver et al., 2004, Christoff et al., 2011. ...
... The similarities in terms of content, cognitive process, and neurophysiological recruitment between self--generated thought and creativity are discussed in detail elsewhere (Christoff et al., 2011, Ellamil et al., 2012, Fox and Christoff, 2014, Beaty et al., 2015; the salient point for us here is that these several similarities make the neurochemistry of creative thought potentially informative. Probably the most reliable finding from such research is that decreasing levels of arousal--heightening neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, appears to be beneficial for creative thinking (Beversdorf et al., 1999, Heilman et al., 2003, Silver et al., 2004, Christoff et al., 2011. The proposed rationale for these findings is that decreased arousal and cognitive control facilitates the associative, novel forms of thought necessary to the generation of creative ideas (Christoff et al., 2011). ...
Investigation of the neural basis of self-generated thought is moving beyond a simple identification with default network activation toward a more comprehensive view recognizing the role of the frontoparietal control network and other areas. A major task ahead is to unravel the functional roles and temporal dynamics of the widely distributed brain regions recruited during self-generated thought. We argue that various other neuroscientific methods - including lesion studies, human intracranial electrophysiology, and manipulation of neurochemistry - have much to contribute to this project. These diverse data have yet to be synthesized with the growing understanding of self-generated thought gained from neuroimaging, however. Here, we highlight several areas of ongoing inquiry and illustrate how evidence from other methodologies corroborates, complements, and clarifies findings from functional neuroimaging. Each methodology has particular strengths: functional neuroimaging reveals much about the variety of brain areas and networks reliably recruited. Lesion studies point to regions critical to generating and consciously experiencing self-generated thought. Human intracranial electrophysiology illuminates how and where in the brain thought is generated and where this activity subsequently spreads. Finally, measurement and manipulation of neurotransmitter and hormone levels can clarify what kind of neurochemical milieu drives or facilitates self-generated cognition. Integrating evidence from multiple complementary modalities will be a critical step on the way to improving our understanding of the neurobiology of functional and dysfunctional forms of self-generated thought.
... Instead, based on the conclusions of the above review of meta-analyses, we describe two leading frameworks that explicitly address the improvement of executive control task performance following mindfulness training. In addition, we discuss various key mechanisms that have been proposed by alternative frameworks, particularly meta-awareness 56 , decentring 57 and equanimity 58 . ...
... We use the term 'cognitive-affective' to emphasize the interplay between mind-wandering and negative affect during task interference. Mind-wandering involves engagement in thoughts unrelated to the current demands of the external environment (also referred to as off-task thinking) 92,93 and is well known to interfere with ongoing task performance 56,94 . It can be either entirely self-generated (for instance, "I've just remembered I have my medical appointment this afternoon") or task-related (for instance, "This task is so boring; I'd rather be walking in the park"). ...
... Not all mind-wandering is associated with negative mood or is necessarily maladaptive [104][105][106][107][108] . Nevertheless, when performing tasks that require executive control, the presence of mind-wandering impairs performance 56,94 , with negatively valenced mind-wandering being the most sticky (difficult to disengage from) 109 and disruptive form 98,110,111 . Furthermore, laboratory assessments of executive control are typically experienced as effortful and aversive 22,112,113 , which makes these tasks themselves a source of affective interference. ...
... Developing attentional skills through this technique is crucial for progressing to more advanced meditation practices (6)(7)(8). However, novices are often deeply entrenched in selfreferential mental processing (84) with limited meta-cognitive awareness and attention regulation capacity, which can contribute to limited recognition of and disengagement from mental distractions during meditation (9,10). These factors can diminish the quality and psychological benefits of meditation practice, discouraging continued practice (11)(12)(13)(14). ...
... Sham NF signals provided to the control group were uncorrelated with their actual PCC signals, yet both groups perceptions of NF authenticity, task performance, and usefulness of NF for learning meditation, indicating effective blinding and comparable motivation, engagement, expectations, and perception of learning across groups.The function of the DLPFC, in the CEN, involves cognitive control which includes managing attentional resources to facilitate goal-directed behaviour (40) and amplifying attention to target stimuli while filtering out distractions (41). Decoupling between CEN regions (e.g., DLPFC) and DMN regions (e.g., PCC) is thought to release attentional resources from sustained mental processing, facilitating enhanced bottom-up perception of present-moment sensory and bodily stimuli(10,(42)(43)(44)(45). According to the neurocognitive network model of focused attention meditation (6), shifting attention away from default mental processing towards target stimuli, such as breathing sensations, is linked to DMN suppression and relative increases in CEN and SN activity. ...
Meditation can benefit well-being and mental health, but novices often struggle to effectively recognize and disengage from mental processes during meditation due to limited awareness, potentially diminishing meditation's benefits. We investigated whether personalised high-precision neurofeedback (NF) can improve disengagement from mental activity during meditation and enhance meditation's outcomes. In a single-blind, controlled, longitudinal paradigm, 40 novice meditators underwent two consecutive days of meditation training with intermittent visual feedback from either their own (N=20) or a matched participant's (N=20; control group) posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activity measured using 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging. During training, the experimental group showed stronger functional decoupling of PCC from dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, indicating better control over disengagement from mental processes during meditation. This led to greater improvements in emotional well-being and mindful awareness of mental processes during a week of real-world self-guided meditation. We provide compelling evidence supporting the utility of high-precision NF-guided meditation training to optimise real-world meditation practice for well-being.
... This increases the signal-to-noise ratio of the neural signal, enhancing the representation of the stimulus for later processing stages (Kok, 1997;O'Craven et al., 1997;Treue & Martinez-Trujillo, 2006). Additionally, the perceptual decoupling model of mind wandering suggests that the occurrence of mind wandering reflects a shift of attention away from the environment and thus results in a decoupling from perception (Schooler et al., 2011). Therefore, fluctuations of attention in the form of attentional lapses, mind wandering, or goal maintenance failures may impact the fidelity of perceptual processing. ...
Mental speed theories of intelligence suggest that people are smarter because they are faster. We argue that attention control plays an important and fundamental role in mediating the relationship between basic sensory processes and more complex cognitive processes such as fluid intelligence. One of the most successful paradigms for establishing a mental speed theory of intelligence is the inspection time task. In this article, we examine the mental speed and the attention control perspectives on the inspection time task and its relationship with fluid intelligence. Integrating experimental and correlational approaches, we find that attention control statistically explains the inspection time task’s correlation with fluid intelligence and working memory capacity. Attention control and inspection time are correlated beyond their relationship with other measures of processing speed. Further, while we find no evidence that selective attention specifically is related to inspection time performance, both attention control and inspection time predicted declines in accuracy as participants sustained their attention over time; other measures of processing speed did not predict sustained attention performance. Collectively, these results indicate that inspection time is related to the ability to control attention, especially the ability to sustain attention over time.
... Indeed, maintaining a steady gaze has been suggested as a tactic to actively filter out unnecessary and distracting external stimuli during internal cognitive processes (Schooler et al., 2011;Smallwodd et al., 2007). This proposal is in line with the inhibition hypothesis of the quiet eye (Klostermann, 2019), which posits that by fixating on a single task-relevant cue, movements can be more efficiently coordinated, allowing for the selection of a single movement plan while suppressing alternatives, as with the information-reduction hypothesis (Haider & Frensch, 1999). ...
We investigated where and how expert and novice aikido practitioners fixate their gaze to achieve success in choku tsuki performance. Participants were 20 right-handed aikido male practitioners (black belts = 10; white belts = 8; yellow belts = 2), with an average age of 33.5 years (SD = 7.4). Participants performed a choku tsuki, aiming to hit with a stick (jo) the center of a target on the chest of a virtual opponent attacking them with a wooden sword (bokken). Dependent variables included performance success (absolute frequency of target hits while the attacking opponent was holding the bokken above his head) and gaze behavior (number, variability, and durations of gaze fixations on specific interest areas). The results showed that the experts have fewer and longer fixations than novices; and, whereas experts focused on the target, novices varied their fixations on the opponent’s head and feet, and the target and sword. We concluded that the experts were able to set the target as a functional point of gaze fixation, which allowed them to hit it while they monitored the sword’s movement for a choku tsuki successful performance.
Keywords: motor behavior, martial arts, performance, visual attention, eye tracking.
... It is a higher order cognitive skill that involves both thinking about thinking and the ability to monitor and control one's own cognitive processes (Proust, 2013). In this sense, metacognition can be considered a supracategory that embeds the notion of meta-awareness, which is the capacity of people to monitor their own states of mind (Schooler et al., 2011;Schraw & Dennison, 1994). Metacognition research relates to the study of the knowledge people have about their own cognitive process and the functioning of their minds and how they retrieve and use that knowledge to understand, monitor, and control cognitions (Koriat, 2007). ...
Purpose
Despite the presence of mystical-type experiences in psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), an understanding of the cognitive processes involved is still lacking. Guided by theory and empirical research, we hypothesized a cognitive-grounded perspective based on current metacognition models to promote the understanding of the psychological processes involved in mystical-type experiences induced by psychedelic substances.
Method
The definition of metacognition is reviewed, with a particular focus on its role in psychotherapy and how it is used to understand altered states of consciousness such as meditation, lucid dreaming, and ecstatic epilepsy. We theoretically posited that metacognition is affected by psychedelic substance intake. We used metacognition models to understand the noetic facet of the mystical-type experience potentially induced by psychedelics, focusing on insight processes and proposing a specific definition of the “Aha!”/ “Eureka!” experience as a metacognitive feeling of epistemic gain.
Results
We hypothesized that the noetic feature of the psychedelic-induced mystical-type experience might account for the activation of procedural, performance-based, outcome-related metacognitive feelings, which are metacognitive feelings of epistemic gain.
Conclusions
We review the potential implications of this framework within PAT in relation to clinically relevant aspects such as therapeutic preparation, intention setting, and outcome and integration; the use of music; traumatic memory recall; therapists’ self-experience; suggestibility; and spiritual bypassing. Ultimately, we describe different lines of further research.
... In contrast, TG demonstrated greater task focus, directing more attention to the task-related cues, particularly the TAs, indicating a higher level of visual attention to relevant information, that is congruent to previous findings (Carmichael et al., 2010). Nevertheless, it is important to clarify what the appropriate reaction would be in this case, as fixated gaze positions may vary in terms of where attention is focused (Schooler et al., 2011). Therefore, they are not always an accurate indicator of good performance. ...
Introduction
Dual-task (DT) ability is essential in sports, where athletes must perform motor and cognitive tasks simultaneously. Virtual reality (VR), with its enhanced performance and affordability, offers a valuable tool for training and assessing these abilities. This study aimed to develop VR scenarios to measure DT costs and compare DT ability between athletes from individual (IG) and team (TG) sports using a basketball-specific scenario.
Methods
29 participants completed two experiments to examine DT ability: a reaching and a dribbling task (DR). The reaching involved three tasks: walking a 4-m track, standing while reacting to popping balls, and a combination of both. Parameters such as step length, gait time, and reaction were measured. In DR, participants dribbled while reacting to a virtual opponent. Data on conduction time, errors, reaction time, gaze behavior (GB), and decision-making were analyzed.
Results
Significant differences were found between single and DT performances, with DT costs reaching up to 20% ( p > 0.05). However, no significant differences were observed between IG and TG for selected parameters ( F (1, 28) = 1.104, p = 0.410, partial η ² = 0.380).
Discussion
Differences in GB and decision-making were noted and discussed. VR proved effective in assessing DT costs and providing insights into decision-making processes.
... The high prevalence of MW during daily life points to a potential functional relevance even though it is detrimental for performance in a primary task in most contexts (Baars, 2010;Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). For example, since engagement in internal tasks such as planning or mentally reviewing a checklist is only possible if one is able to detach oneself from the immediate environment, a flexible allocation of the attentional focus between internal and external information serves as a valuable tool for optimizing time management (Schooler et al., 2011). Moreover, recent studies have found improved implicit sequence learning during MW, highlighting its potential benefits on certain cognitive functions (Simor et al., 2024;Vékony et al., 2025). ...
Mind wandering (MW) is a common mental phenomenon where attention shifts spontaneously from an external task to internal trains of thought. Recent studies propose that non-invasive brain stimulation methods hold potential for influencing attentional shifts between on-task and MW states. Exploratory analysis from a recent repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) study reported that targeting the left angular gyrus (AG) with inhibitory continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) reduced MW compared to sham stimulation, without affecting executive performance (Drevland et al., 2024). The present study is a pre-registered, direct replication of the study by Drevland et al., but also expands their protocol by applying excitatory intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) targeting the same cortical area. Using a triple-blind crossover design, healthy participants completed four blocks of the Finger-Tapping Random Sequence Generation Task (FT-RSGT) in three sessions on separate days. Each session included three rounds of either real (cTBS or iTBS) or sham stimulation in an accelerated rTMS design. We successfully replicated the effect of cTBS in reducing MW propensity but failed to find the expected increase in MW post-iTBS stimulation. Furthermore, based on a joint analysis of the current data and that from Drevland et al., we found compelling evidence for cTBS being efficient both in reducing MW and improving executive performance. Our results provide evidence for the causal relationship between the left AG and shifts of attention during an executive task, highlighting the role of the default mode network in the generation and maintenance of MW episodes.
... In healthy individuals, such cognitive processes are largely adaptive, brief, and non-directive in nature. Without the dire consequences seen in the addictive and distressing cycle of MD, normative daydreaming and mind-wandering can facilitate relaxation, emotion-regulation, creativity, and problem-solving (Baird et al., 2011;Mooneyham and Schooler, 2013), as well as self-reflection (Smallwood and Schooler, 2013) future planning, attentional cycling between information streams, and improved learning (McMillan et al., 2013;Schooler et al., 2011). ...
Maladaptive daydreaming (MD) is an increasingly recognised mental health difficulty, which refers to a compulsive cycle of dissociative absorption in vivid mental fantasy that results in clinical distress and functional impairment. Fantasies are usually complex in plot and characters, and are highly pleasurable and absorbing. MD provides temporary escape, soothing, or attempted processing of difficult internal and external experiences, but results in longer-term negative consequences that both create and exacerbate real-life suffering. The literature thus far has expanded beyond defining and understanding MD and has turned its attention towards assessment and pilot interventions. This paper presents the first formulation framework and associated diagrammatic model of MD, drawing upon the existing evidence base and cognitive behavioural theory to capture its development, maintenance, and processes. The model was reviewed by two leading experts in the field and trialled by three contributors with lived experience of MD. Feedback was positive, suggesting it accurately captured and organised the complexity and depth of the MD experience, facilitated the development of personal insight, and fostered a sense of hope with regard to creating change. The model is intended for use within clinical practice to aid mental health professionals and people with MD to guide assessment, collaborative discovery and formulation, and intervention. It is imperative that the model be tested further within research and clinical practice to further ensure its efficacy, validity, and applicability for people with MD.
Key learning aims
(1) To consider the development and maintenance factors, and processes involved in MD from a cognitive behavioural perspective.
(2) To introduce a new formulation model for MD and understand how the model can be used in clinical practice.
(3) To highlight how psychological formulation has the power to better understand and organise the complex and often overwhelming MD phenomenon and provide hope for meaningful change.
... Novelly, we observed a state with correlations between CC and SM networks, more present in breath-counting. This could represent inward attention to body sensations (Critchley et al. 2004;Khalsa et al. 2009;Wu et al. 2019) compared to the usual perceptual decoupling between thought and somatosensations which relates to DMN-SMN anticorrelations (Schooler et al. 2011;Kucyi et al. 2021). Fig. 4. Targeted brain states across breath-counting and resting-state. ...
Breathing meditation typically consists of directing attention toward breathing and redirecting attention when the mind wanders. As yet, we do not have a full understanding of the neural mechanisms of breath attention, in particular, how large-scale network interactions may be different between breath attention and rest and how these interactions may be modulated during periods of on-task and off-task attention to the breath. One promising approach may be examining fMRI measures including static connectivity between brain regions as well as dynamic, time-varying brain states. In this study, we analyzed static and dynamic functional connectivity in 72 adolescents during a breath-counting task (BCT), leveraging physiological respiration data to detect objective on-task and off-task periods. During the BCT relative to rest, we identified increases in static connectivity within attention-direction and orienting networks and anticorrelations between attention networks and the DMN. Dynamic connectivity analysis revealed four distinct brain states, including a DMN-anticorrelated brain state, proportionally more present during the BCT than the rest. We found there were distinct brain state markers of (i) breathing tasks vs rest and (ii) momentary on-task vs off-task attention within the BCT, yet in this analysis, no identifiable brain states ref lecting between-individual behavioral variability.
... Unlike other forms of emotion regulation that aim to alter the expression or duration of emotion, mindfulness indirectly supports emotional functioning by fostering meta-awareness, defined as the ability to recognize the experience of having an emotional reaction (among other mental events) as it occurs in real time 49 . Meta-cognitive models of mindfulness posit that meta-awareness supports emotion regulation through a number of possible pathways [50][51][52] . ...
Emotional appraisals of political stimuli (e.g., videos) have been shown to drive shared neural encoding, which correspond to shared, yet divisive, interpretations of such stimuli. However, mindfulness practice may entrain a form of emotion regulation that de-automatizes social biases, possibly through alteration of such neural mechanisms. The present study combined a naturalistic neuroimaging paradigm and a randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of short-term mindfulness training (MT) (n = 35) vs structurally equivalent Cognitive Reappraisal training (CT) (n = 37) on politically-situated emotions while evaluating the mechanistic role of prefrontal cortical neural synchrony. Participants underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recording while viewing inflammatory partisan news clips and continuously rating their momentary discrete emotions. MT participants were more likely to respond with extreme levels of anger (odds ratio = 0.12, p < 0.001) and disgust (odds ratio = 0.08, p < 0.001) relative to CT participants. Neural synchrony-based analyses suggested that participants with extreme emotion reactions exhibited greater prefrontal cortical neural synchrony, but that this pattern was less prominent in participants receiving MT relative to CT (CT > MT; channel 1 ISC = 0.040, p = 0.030).
... Unlike the dynamic approach, the "family resemblance" paradigm conceptualizes MW as an umbrella term for heterogeneous thought constructs (Seli et al., 2018), including terms such as daydreaming, rumination, and off-task thoughts. Others formulate MW as internally generated thought (Schooler et al., 2011) or task-unrelated thoughts , meaning that it is defined by its lack of relationship to the ongoing task at hand. These theoretical terminologies and operative definitions have been claimed to be vague and even paradoxical since they consider contradicting structures of thought-such as wandering versus fixating, scattered versus coherent, reminiscing versus fantasizing-as the same mental activity (Christoff et al., 2016Irving, 2016;Mills et al., 2018). ...
Maladaptive daydreaming (MD) is an impairing condition characterized by addiction to narrative, emotional fantasizing, involving dissociative absorption. By compulsively withdrawing towards vivid imaginative scenarios, MD hinders attentional functioning and replaces social interactions. Previous Interview-based research showed clinical importance in differentiating MD from Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the associated construct of mind-wandering. We aimed to create a self-report tool asking directly about the content and structure of distracting thoughts.
Two samples, namely, 346 undergraduate students and 381 adults from the general community, completed a novel measure, the Daydreaming Characteristics Questionnaire (DCQ), along with validated measures for ADHD, mind-wandering, MD, dissociation, and general distress. Exploratory Factor Analyses on the DCQ, replicated across both samples, yielded two distinct factors (immersive daydreaming, and daydream functionality) uniquely associated with MD.
The DCQ represents characteristics of immersive daydreaming much more than general attentional deficiency and is thus useful in differentiating MD from ADHD/mind-wandering distractions.
... Cognitive states that are 'coupled' to events in the immediate environment are assumed to be linked to greater cortical processing of sensory input (Smallwood et al., 2008a), better task performance, and memory for events in narrative comprehension tasks like reading (Smallwood and Andrews-Hanna, 2013;Smallwood et al., 2008b;Zhang et al., 2022). In contrast, perceptually 'decoupled' states from sensory input, such as the experience of mindwandering (Smallwood and Schooler, 2006;Smallwood and Schooler, 2015), provide an opportunity to pursue thoughts derived from memory (Zhang et al., 2022;Medea et al., 2018) but can be linked to compromised task performance and worse memory for events (Schooler et al., 2011). Moreover, in situations where comprehension is important, states of distraction are hypothesized to be linked to poor executive control (Smallwood and Andrews-Hanna, 2013;Smallwood and Schooler, 2015;McVay and Kane, 2010). ...
Movie-watching is a central aspect of our lives and an important paradigm for understanding the brain mechanisms behind cognition as it occurs in daily life. Contemporary views of ongoing thought argue that the ability to make sense of events in the ‘here and now’ depend on the neural processing of incoming sensory information by auditory and visual cortex, which are kept in check by systems in association cortex. However, we currently lack an understanding of how patterns of ongoing thoughts map onto the different brain systems when we watch a film, partly because methods of sampling experience disrupt the dynamics of brain activity and the experience of movie-watching. Our study established a novel method for mapping thought patterns onto the brain activity that occurs at different moments of a film, which does not disrupt the time course of brain activity or the movie-watching experience. We found moments when experience sampling highlighted engagement with multi-sensory features of the film or highlighted thoughts with episodic features, regions of sensory cortex were more active and subsequent memory for events in the movie was better—on the other hand, periods of intrusive distraction emerged when activity in regions of association cortex within the frontoparietal system was reduced. These results highlight the critical role sensory systems play in the multi-modal experience of movie-watching and provide evidence for the role of association cortex in reducing distraction when we watch films.
... [1][2][3] While in many everyday situations, we can dynamically adjust the focus of attention, and thus, disengagement from the external environment does not necessarily impact performance under low demands, the negative consequences of MW during various cognitive tasks have been extensively documented. 4,5 For instance, MW impairs reading comprehension, 6 sustained attention and executive control, 7,8 model-based decision-making, 9 explicit deterministic sequence learning, 10 working memory, and fluid intelligence. 11,12 On a behavioral level, reduced performance linked to MW is usually evidenced by worse accuracy, that is, failures to respond to targets, impulsive responses (e.g., quick responses to non-target items), or increased reaction time variability, all being indicative of suboptimal task-related cognitive control. ...
The human brain spends 30–50% of its waking hours engaged in mind-wandering (MW), a common phenomenon in which individuals either spontaneously or deliberately shift their attention away from external tasks to task-unrelated internal thoughts. Despite the significant amount of time dedicated to MW, its underlying reasons remain unexplained. Our pre-registered study investigates the potential adaptive aspects of MW, particularly its role in predictive processes measured by statistical learning. We simultaneously assessed visuomotor task performance as well as the capability to extract probabilistic information from the environment while assessing task focus (on-task vs. MW). We found that MW was associated with enhanced extraction of hidden, but predictable patterns. This finding suggests that MW may have functional relevance in human cognition by shaping behavior and predictive processes. Overall, our results highlight the importance of considering the adaptive aspects of MW, and its potential to enhance certain fundamental cognitive abilities.
... This finding may highlight a key difference in the experience of formlessness (in formless ACAM-J) versus non-dual awareness as practiced in other meditation types (Josipovic, 2019(Josipovic, , 2014(Josipovic, , 2010. Although the background voidness in the formless ACAM-J may be enhanced by increased connectivity between DMN and other networks, the focused attention needed to explicitly notice the underlying "grades of formlessness" may require functional segregation of the DMN (Schooler et al., 2011). Future research should examine these hypotheses with independent measures of non-dual and meta-awareness. ...
Using a combination of fMRI, EEG, and phenomenology ratings, we examined the neurophenomenology of advanced concentrative absorption meditation, namely jhanas (ACAM-J), in a practitioner with over 23,000 h of meditation practice. Our study shows that ACAM-J states induce reliable changes in conscious experience and that these experiences are related to neural activity. Using resting-state fMRI functional connectivity, we found that ACAM-J is associated with decreased within-network modularity, increased global functional connectivity (GFC), and desegregation of the default mode and visual networks. Compared to control tasks, the ACAM-J were also related to widespread decreases in broadband EEG oscillatory power and increases in Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZ, a measure of brain entropy). Some fMRI findings varied by the control task used, while EEG results remained consistent, emphasizing both shared and unique neural features of ACAM-J. These differences in fMRI and EEG-measured neurophysiological properties correlated with specific changes in phenomenology – and especially with ACAM-J-induced states of bliss - enriching our understanding of these advanced meditative states. Our results show that advanced meditation practices markedly dysregulate high-level brain systems via practices of enhanced attention to sensations, corroborating recent neurocognitive theories of meditation as the deconstruction of the brain’s cortical hierarchy. Overall, our results suggest that ACAM-J is associated with the modulation of large-scale brain networks in both fMRI and EEG, with potential implications for understanding the mechanisms of deep concentration practices and their effects on subjective experience.
... Importantly, our findings bear relevance to the debate regarding the influence of spontaneous associative thought (i.e., mind wandering; Christoff et al., 2016;Mason et al., 2007;Seli et al., 2018), on memory. Mind wandering has often been characterized by disengagement from perceptual processing (Schooler et al., 2011), and therefore linked with reduced subsequent memory (Blonde et al., 2022). Nonetheless, recent works have shown that some forms of mind wandering are actually implicated with visual imagery and scene construction (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2013), which may aid scene representation when retrieval is needed. ...
Spontaneous associative processes (e.g., mind wandering, spontaneous memory recollection) are prevalent in everyday life, yet their influence on perceptual scene memory is under debate. Given that scene perception involves extraction of contextual associations, we hypothesized that associative thought would enhance scene memory by promoting encoding of contextual associations. In an online experiment (N = 75), participants viewed scenes, and following each scene either generated chained-free associations (associative processing), or, as control, listed words that begin with a specific letter (phonological processing). Scene memory was tested after an intermediate creativity task, which is also shown to rely on associative processes. Results revealed that associative thought, regardless of its conceptual (semantic) distances between responses, enhanced scene-gist memory, but hampered memory of scene details, implying that associative thought facilitates contextual encoding. In a follow-up experiment (N = 74), we found that the effect of associative thought on scene-gist memory was mediated by scene labeling. When participants were asked to explicitly label the scene before completing an associative processing or a phonological processing task, scene-gist memory was prioritized at the expense of scene details, eliminating the memory differences between tasks. These findings imply that labeling past perceived scenes, whether explicitly or implicitly during associative thought, facilitates scene-gist memory. Lastly, in both experiments, creativity was not correlated with scene memory but was positively correlated with the semantic distances between scene-based associations, extending past findings that link creativity with the breadth of associative processes. Together, these findings highlight the likely effect of post-perceptual associative processes on higher-order cognitive functions, such as memory consolidation and creative thought.
... Mindfulness and mind wandering are two concepts with opposing meanings. Mindfulness exercises universally focus attention on the present moment, drawing focus to the current experience (Williams & Kabat-Zinn, 2011), whereas mind wandering (MW) is the separation of an individual's mind from the current task (Schooler et al., 2011;Smallwood, 2013). The research related to mindfulness and mind wandering was initially based on the conceptual have an ameliorative effect on mind wandering in special populations (e.g., anxious individuals) (Xu et al., 2017). ...
The objective of the current study was to examine the effect of one-session mindfulness on mind wandering, and to assess whether the duration or intervals of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) influence this effect. Fifty-six undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either a Mindfulness Meditation Group (MMG) or a Controlled Group (CG). The MMG received a 15-minute audio exercise on mindful breathing, while the CG listened to a 15-minute audio exercise on irrelevant news. Subsequently, participants from both groups were asked to complete a 20-minute combination of the Thought Probe and SART. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the MMG displayed fewer errors of omission and Reaction Time Coefficient of Variability (RTCV) relative to the CG. At 10, 15, and 20 minutes of SART duration, the MMG recorded a significantly fewer errors of omission than the CG, while at 5 minutes of SART duration, there was no significant difference between the two groups. Further analysis showed that the interaction between the groups and the SART time interval had no significant differences in the indicators of omission errors and dependent variables such as RTCV. These results suggest that the effects of a single mindfulness meditation intervention are stable over the duration of 20 minutes of SART, but measures of the effect of a single-session mindfulness meditation on reducing mind wandering are still affected by the duration of the task.
... Those answers were allocated to an "other" category. In a second step, participants were asked to indicate, if applicable, whether they were aware that their mind was wandering before they were interrupted (adapted from Christoff et al., 2009;Schooler et al., 2011; see Figure 2). The answer to the second question was then utilized to divide the previously defined TUT category into aware and unaware TUTs. ...
Remote learning settings require students to self-regulate their behavioral, affective, and cognitive processes, including preventing mind wandering. Such engagement in task-unrelated thoughts has a negative impact on learning outcomes and can occur with or without students’ awareness of it. However, research on the meta-awareness of mind wandering in education remains limited, predominantly relying on self-report measures that capture discrete information at specific time points. Therefore, there is a need to investigate and measure temporal dynamics in the meta-awareness of mind wandering continuously over time. This study examined the temporal patterns of 15 mind-wandering and meta-awareness probes in a sample of university students (N = 87) while they watched a video lecture. We found that the majority (60%) of mind wandering occurred with meta-awareness. Cluster analysis identified five distinct thought sequence clusters. Thought patterns dominated by unaware mind wandering were negatively associated with fact- and inference-based learning, whereas persistent aware mind-wandering patterns were linked to reduced deep-level understanding. Initial exploration into predictive modeling, based on eye gaze features, revealed that the models could distinguish between aware and unaware mind-wandering instances above the chance level (macro F1 = 0.387). Model explainability methods were employed to investigate the intricate relationship between gaze and mind wandering. It revealed the importance of eye vergence and saccade velocity in distinguishing mind-wandering types. The findings contribute to understanding mind-wandering meta-awareness dynamics and highlight the capacity of continuous assessment methods to capture and address mind wandering in remote learning environments.
... All in all, thus, this line of evidence suggests that pupillometry may indeed be capable to assess and possibly to quantify both the locus and the content of attention. This is directly relevant to the study of mind-wandering, because MW unfolding has been typically associated with perceptual decoupling from the external environment (Schooler et al. 2011;Smallwood et al. 2011). In other words, the internal mental events that define MW would interfere and detract resources from the processing of external, physical ones, which would then elicit a weaker light reflex as a consequence. ...
Mind‐wandering (MW) refers to the shift of attention away from an ongoing task and/or external environment towards mental contents (e.g., memories, prospective thoughts) unrelated to the task. Physiological measures (e.g., pupil size, EEG, and fMRI) have often been acquired as objective markers for MW states, which has greatly helped their study as well as triangulation with other measures. Pupillometry in particular has been used as a covert biomarker of MW because it is reliably modulated by several distinct processes spanning arousal, emotion, and attention, and it signals attentional lapses. Yet, coupling MW and the measurement of pupil size has led to seemingly contrasting results. We argue that, common to the studies reviewed here, one reason is resolving to the measurement of tonic pupil size, which reflects low‐frequency, slow changes in one's physiological state, and thus implicitly assumes that MW is a static, long‐lasting process. We then additionally focus on three major axes of variability in the reviewed studies: (i) the definition and measurement of MW; (ii) the impact of contextual aspects, such as task demands and individual arousal levels; (iii) the identification and tracking of MW in combination with pupillary measures. We provide an overview of these differences and put forward recommendations for using physiological measures—including, but not limited to, pupil size—in MW research effectively. In conclusion, pupillometry can be a very informative tool for MW research, provided that it is used with the due methodological caution.
... Mind-wandering has been a topic of research for more than a decade, resulting in many instrumental discoveries in the field of cognitive neurosciences and the neural basis of mind wandering (Christoff et al., 2009;Kane & McVay, 2012;Schooler et al., 2011;Seli et al., 2016), its costs and benefits (Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013;Smallwood & Andrews-Hanna, 2013;Smallwood et al., 2007), and the feasibility of using objective measures to detect mind wandering Bixler & D'Mello, 2016;Franklin, et al., 2011). Therefore, to conceptualize mind wandering, Smallwood and Schooler (2006) unified a set of somewhat related phenomena examined by earlier studies, including task-unrelated images and thoughts (Giambra & Grodsky, 1989), stimulus-independent thought (Antrobus, 1968), task-unrelated thought (Smallwood et al., 2003), mind pops (Kvavilashvili & Mandler, 2004), zone outs (Schooler et al., 2004), etc. ...
In our daily lives, we do experience a shift of attention while executing an ongoing task. Earlier research on mind-wandering has shown that in this mental state, thoughts emerge spontaneously, relatively free from constraints and intentions (Christoff and colleagues, 2016). In this study, we manipulated mind wandering with varying priming conditions (Feed-forward & non- feed forward) in the Sustained Attention to Response Task. Further, a self-reported mind wandering scale, parameters of eye movement, and hemodynamic levels were utilized to quantify the mind wanderers. We used probe questions during the SART experiment to understand the mind wandering tendencies of individuals.
Results indicate that the Feed-forward priming group is less prone to committing SART errors compared to the non-feed forward priming group of participants. This finding was corroborated by the participants’ responses to standardized measures. More response time taken by the priming group could indicate the use of more cognitive resources for the execution of the response. Analysis of eye movement parameters did not reveal a significant difference between low and high mind wandering. Higher activation of hemodynamic levels was observed over the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain region associated with the default mode network during mind-wandering episodes. Such results can translate into the development of critical intervention strategies for managing ADHD and vigilance-related tasks.
... Various definitions of the term MW have been proposed (e.g., Seli et al., 2018). For the purpose of this review, MW will be primarily understood in a broad sense as a drift of attention away from the current situation and task engagement towards unrelated thoughts (Schooler et al., 2011). Specific clinical terms for phenomena related to MW, such as rumination and maladaptive daydreaming, will be used when these terms have been applied in the reviewed articles. ...
Mind wandering (MW) is intricately linked to sleep and affect, bearing clinical relevance for various psychiatric conditions, notably attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders. Most reviews concur that the relationship between disturbed sleep and negative affect is bidirectional. The directional relationships between MW propensity and disturbed sleep, as well as MW propensity and negative affect, are less clear. Therefore, this brief review aims to examine the limited studies that have directly explored temporally sequential relationships. These studies provide clear evidence for an impact of affect on MW and of MW on sleep, along with less unequivocal evidence for an influence of MW on affect and sleep on MW. Collectively, these individual reinforcement loops may constitute a threefold vicious cycle, which may contribute to the development and perpetuation of psychiatric disorders. Available data convincingly suggest an impact cycle in the direction “MW propensity → disturbed sleep → negative affect → MW propensity,” while evidence for the inverse impact cycle is less pronounced.
... Further, the interplay between learners' attention and learning is complex. Learners' attentional states are not always aligned with their external gaze, but can instead be oriented internally to either on-or off-task thoughts [10,11]. Additionally, just because a learner's gaze has left their learning materials, does not mean they are off-task. ...
... On average, we spend a third or more of our waking hours engaging in self-generated thoughts that are unrelated to our ongoing activities (Kane et al., 2007;Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010;Schooler et al., 2011). Here, we introduced a novel questionnaire, the BMW-3, that allows measuring individual differences in the frequency, nature, and awareness of these self-generated thoughts. ...
In recent years, researchers from different fields have become increasingly interested in measuring individual differences in mind wandering as a psychological trait. Although there are several questionnaires that allow for an assessment of people’s perceptions of their mind wandering experiences, they either define mind wandering in a very broad sense or do not sufficiently separate different aspects of mind wandering. Here, we introduce the Brief Mind Wandering Three-Factor Scale (BMW-3), a 12-item questionnaire available in German and English. The BMW-3 conceptualizes mind wandering as task-unrelated thought and measures three dimensions of mind wandering: unintentional mind wandering, intentional mind wandering, and meta-awareness of mind wandering. Based on results from 1038 participants (823 German speakers, 215 English speakers), we found support for the proposed three-factorial structure of mind wandering and for scalar measurement invariance of the German and English versions. All subscales showed good internal consistencies and moderate to high test–retest correlations and thus provide an effective assessment of individual differences in mind wandering. Moreover, the BMW-3 showed good convergent validity when compared to existing retrospective measures of mind wandering and mindfulness and was related to conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness as well as self-reported attentional control. Lastly, it predicted the propensity for mind wandering inside and outside the lab (as assessed by in-the-moment experience sampling), the frequency of experiencing depressive symptoms, and the use of functional and dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. All in all, the BMW-3 provides a brief, reliable, and valid assessment of mind wandering for basic and clinical research.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13428-024-02500-6.
... In this way, they are often classified as task-unrelated and stimulus independent thoughts (McVay & Kane, 2009) and often occur during tasks or situations that are familiar, repetitive, and undemanding tasks (Schooler et al., 2011). This tendency for the mind to wander demonstrates the ways in which ongoing cognitive processes are rarely dedicated to one task at a time and instead may be divided across the external and internal world in dynamic ways. ...
By drawing attention away from environmental stimuli, mind-wandering may disrupt encoding of sensoryinformation and segmentation of ongoing experiences into discrete events.However, relatively little is known about its consequences for the formation and later recall of temporally structured event memories.To investigate howmind-wandering influencestemporal memory, we adapted the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART)paradigmto give it episodic structure(“EpiSART”). By presenting participants with a continuous series of visual objects and periodically switching the category of these object stimulito induce event boundaries, we were able to examine the influence of event boundaries on response time variability, a marker ofmind-wandering. Across four experiments, wefound a significant change in the slope of the response time variance time course (VTC) before versusafter an event boundary, with the former having a positive slope (increasing mind-wandering) and the latter having a negative slope (reduction in mind-wandering). Critically, the degree to which participants redirected their focus, indexed by a reduction in the VTC, after an event boundary (Experiment 1and 2) orafter making an error (Experiment 3) predicted subsequent memory for the temporal order of events.However, when task demands increased, and mind-wanderingconsequentlydecreased, changes in VTC slopeat these critical time points had no relationship with subsequent temporal order memory (Experiment 4). Taken together, these results suggest that event boundaries and errors serve to momentarily reduce mind-wanderingin a mannerthat is consequential for temporal memory.
As artificial intelligence (AI) improves, traditional alignment strategies may falter in the face of unpredictable self-improvement, hidden subgoals, and the sheer complexity of intelligent systems. Rather than externally constraining behavior, we advocate designing AI with intrinsic morality built into its cognitive architecture and world model. Inspired by contemplative wisdom traditions, we show how four axiomatic principles can instil a resilient Wise World Model in AI systems. First, mindfulness enables self-monitoring and recalibration of emergent subgoals. Second, emptiness forestalls dogmatic goal fixation and relaxes rigid priors. Third, non-duality dissolves adversarial self-other boundaries. Fourth, boundless care motivates the universal reduction of suffering. We find that prompting AI to reflect on these principles improves performance on the AILuminate Benchmark using GPT-4o, particularly when combined. We offer detailed implementation strategies for state-of-the-art models, including contemplative architectures, constitutions, and reinforcement of chain-of-thought. For future systems, the active inference framework may offer the self-organizing and dynamic coupling capabilities needed to enact these insights in embodied agents. This interdisciplinary approach offers a self-correcting and resilient alternative to prevailing brittle control schemes.
The relationship between mindfulness and the frequency with which one experiences lucid dreams is conceptually strong and can be grounded in the continuity hypothesis and in neuroscientific investigations. However, only few studies have been performed regarding this relationship, and comparisons between studies are difficult to make because of methodological issues and discrepancies in results. This study aims to investigate the degree to which this relationship exists and determine the potential factors accounting for the expected discrepancies to guide further research. For that aim, a systematic literature review was conducted in Scopus, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. A total of 555 unique studies were screened, of which three studies (consisting of a total of six substudies) were included that matched the inclusion criteria. The studies were analyzed through a narrative synthesis. The findings reveal an inconclusive association between mindfulness and LDF. Factors identified as potentially accounting for the inconsistencies among the results were meditation experience, lucid dreaming experience, dream recall, gender, and age. This review underlines the importance of pursuing future research that takes these factors into account to enhance our understanding of the relationship between mindfulness and lucid dreaming.
The human capacity for sustained attention represents a critical cognitive paradox: while essential for numerous high-stakes tasks, perfect vigilance is fundamentally impossible. This commentary explores the theoretical impossibility of maintaining uninterrupted attention, drawing from extensive interdisciplinary research in cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. Multiple converging lines of evidence demonstrate that sustained attention is constrained by neural, biological, and cognitive limitations. Neural mechanisms reveal that attention operates through rhythmic oscillations, with inherent fluctuations in frontoparietal networks and default mode network interactions. Neurochemical systems and cellular adaptation effects further underscore the impossibility of continuous, perfect vigilance. Empirical research across domains-including aviation, healthcare, industrial safety, and security-consistently demonstrates rapid declines in attention performance over time, regardless of individual expertise or motivation. Even elite performers like military personnel and experienced meditators exhibit inevitable attention lapses. This paper presents an argument against traditional approaches that seek to overcome these limitations through training or willpower. Instead, it advocates for designing human-technology systems that work harmoniously with cognitive constraints. This requires developing adaptive automation, understanding individual and cultural attention variations, and creating frameworks that strategically balance human capabilities with technological support.
The human brain is characterized by idiosyncratic patterns of spontaneous thought, rendering each brain uniquely identifiable from its neural activity. However, deep general anaesthesia suppresses subjective experience. Does it also suppress what makes each brain unique? Here we used functional MRI scans acquired under the effects of the general anaesthetics sevoflurane and propofol to determine whether anaesthetic-induced unconsciousness diminishes the uniqueness of the human brain, both with respect to the brains of other individuals and the brains of another species. Using functional connectivity, we report that under anaesthesia individual brains become less self-similar and less distinguishable from each other. Loss of distinctiveness is highly organized: it co-localizes with the archetypal sensory–association axis, correlating with genetic and morphometric markers of phylogenetic differences between humans and other primates. This effect is more evident at greater anaesthetic depths, reproducible across sevoflurane and propofol and reversed upon recovery. Providing convergent evidence, we show that anaesthesia shifts the functional connectivity of the human brain closer to the functional connectivity of the macaque brain in a low-dimensional space. Finally, anaesthesia diminishes the match between spontaneous brain activity and cognitive brain patterns aggregated from the Neurosynth meta-analytic engine. Collectively, the present results reveal that anaesthetized human brains are not only less distinguishable from each other, but also less distinguishable from the brains of other primates, with specifically human-expanded regions being the most affected by anaesthesia.
A substantial portion of waking life consists of mental experiences that arise involuntarily, including mind wandering, spontaneous thought, and rumination. Given that these experiences are fundamental to cognitive function and mental health, there has been growing scientific and clinical interest in using measures of brain activity to model and predict the momentary occurrence of these various forms of involuntary thought. In the most common machine learning approach in neuroimaging and electrophysiology research, model training data include neural features derived from a population of individuals, and testing is performed on held-out data in one or more individuals. However, sources of idiosyncrasy, such as individual differences in the nature of thought and brain functional organization, raise critical questions regarding whether population-derived neural models can generalize to individuals. In this article, we describe how an idiographic (person-specific) approach has the potential to improve theory and practice in predictive neural modeling of involuntary thought. This approach emphasizes dense sampling of individuals so that a diverse set of brain states and mental experiences can be modeled within a single individual, and rigorous tests of cross-subject generalizability can be performed. We review the advantages and shortcomings of both nomothetic (population-based) and idiographic predictive modeling approaches, including recent insights from dense-sampling neuroimaging studies that demonstrate person-specific brain-based predictions of mind wandering. We discuss implications for developing personalized clinical biomarkers, strategies to overcome the practical challenges of an idiographic approach and neuroethical concerns that must be considered as person-specific models may enhance the potential for accurate brain-based predictions of involuntary thought.
Mind-wandering and boredom are common phenomena, characterized by shifts in attention and difficulties in sustaining focus. Despite extensive research on the costs and benefits of these states, our understanding of the relationship between mind-wandering, boredom, attention, and memory remains limited. In the current study, we examined the impact that mind-wandering and boredom during encoding have on recognition. In particular, we investigated what impact mind-wandering and boredom have during the encoding of visual stimuli on the pupil old/new effect during recognition. We used an incidental memory task and measured mind-wandering and boredom with thought probes during encoding. Furthermore, we used the pupil old/new effect, assessed via eye-tracking, as a measure of recognition memory. We found a significant effect of boredom on recognition memory and observed the pupil old/new effect in participants regardless of instances of mind-wandering or boredom during encoding. Our findings point towards different mechanisms that underly mind-wandering and boredom’s obstruction of attention during stimuli encoding and their effects on stimuli processing. In addition, these findings reinforce the idea of the pupil old/new effect as a reliable measure of recognition memory as it remained consistent irrespective of attentional lapses due to mind-wandering and boredom.
Recent work by Bedi et al. (Experimental Brain Research 242(8):2033-2040, 2024) posits that perceptual decoupling in the sustained attention to response task (SART) is unlikely. In this commentary, we challenge their broad titular claim by revisiting two important studies: Smallwood et al. (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20(3):45, 2008) and deBettencourt et al. (Nature Human Behaviour 3(8):808-816, 2019). These studies demonstrate that lapses in attention during the SART are associated with degraded neural responses and impaired memory encoding. Diminished P300 amplitudes during commission errors and periods of mind-wandering suggest that external perceptual processing is compromised when attention shifts inward. Moreover, recent methodological innovations that integrate real-time monitoring of attentional state have provided evidence of perceptual decoupling in the SART using an interleaved working memory task. Our review is meant to reaffirm the task’s value in studying sustained attention, mind-wandering, and perceptual decoupling. We argue that existing evidence supports a conjecture that perceptual decoupling in the SART is likely, and that valuable new methods allow us to pivot away from commission errors as a behavioral proxy for lapsing attention.
When people are working on creative tasks, they make progress in conscious thought (CT) and unconscious thought (UT) processes. UT occurs outside conscious awareness, and unlike CT, it is independent of working memory resources. Previous studies suggest UT is more influential under certain conditions, known as the UT effect. Typically, these studies utilize a UT paradigm where participants are divided into CT and UT groups: the CT group reflects on the task, while the UT group engages in a distraction. However, UT effect is inconsistent across studies. This study aims to explore the condition under which UT effect works and how to facilitate it. By manipulating performance‐contingent reward, this study compared the creativity of UT and CT in reward and non‐reward conditions under a modified UT paradigm ( N = 179). Creativity was measured by a divergent thinking task (the unusual uses task). Results indicated the fluency and originality in the reward condition were higher than non‐reward condition for the UT group. What's more, UT surpassed CT in fluency and originality only in the reward condition. This study extends UT theory and provides insights in maximizing the benefits of UT, enabling individuals to boost creativity without thinking consciously or consuming working memory resources.
Mind wandering (MW) encompasses both a deliberate and a spontaneous disengagement of attention from the immediate external environment to unrelated internal thoughts. Importantly, MW has been suggested to have an inverse relationship with mindfulness, a state of nonjudgmental awareness of present-moment experience. Although they are, respectively, associated with increased and decreased activity in the default mode network (DMN), the specific contributions of deliberate and spontaneous MW, and their relationships with mindfulness abilities and resting-state macro networks remain to be elucidated. Therefore, resting-state MRI scans from 76 participants were analyzed with group independent component analysis to decompose brain networks into independent macro-networks and to see which of them predicted specific aspects of spontaneous and deliberate MW or mindfulness traits. Our results show that temporal variability of the resting-state DMN predicts spontaneous MW, which in turn is negatively associated with the acting with awareness facet of mindfulness. This finding shows that the DMN is not directly associated with overall mindfulness, but rather demonstrates that there exists a close relationship between DMN and MW, and furthermore, that the involvement of mindfulness abilities in this dynamic may be secondary. In sum, our study contributes to a better understanding of the neural bases of spontaneous MW and its relationship with mindfulness. These results open up the possibility of intervening on specific aspects of our cognitive abilities: for example, our data suggest that training the mindfulness facet acting with awareness would allow lessening our tendency for MW at inopportune times.
This book served as a growing place for my developing ideas on consciousness. The first version was published in 2017. Those ideas were updated in the 2020 version. This is the 2023 update. Major edition changes are summarized in the Introduction.
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Consciousness has a neurological basis and yet it results in subjective feelings of self. Minding Consciousness brings these aspects of mind together. It explains that life urges, adaptive neural dispositions in the brainstem, have extensive links to the vertebrate attention network. Features linked with stronger life urges are more likely to gain attention. And when features gain conscious attention, the life urges that gain attention are experienced as feelings. In effect, life urges both guide attention and become subjective feelings during conscious attention.
Feelings are an essential part of conscious experience. Descartes missed this point when he proclaimed "I think; therefore, I am." We are not simply detached thinkers. Our sense of self is determined by how we feel as we perceive and think. But how does this sense of self develop? Minding Consciousness argues that perceptions provide evidence of external events, the world. Feelings and actions provide evidence of an internal agency, the self. Conscious agents are literally growing storms of attention that learn about their world and about their own reactions to that world. In principle, we can build conscious agents that have feeling-bound attention and who can develop similar feelings of self and world.
The content of presleep thoughts have been assumed to influence sleep quality for a long time, e.g., insomnia has repeatedly been discussed to be associated with anxious thoughts before falling asleep. However, the phenomenon of recurring, voluntary fantasizing before sleep does not appear to be a common research topic. In the first stage of this study, we explored the frequency of presleep fantasizing on a sample of 281 volunteers. In the second stage, we analyzed the content of ca. 5000 fantasy descriptions found online to discover similar patterns. Our results showed that approximately 75% of the respondents fantasizes before sleep regularly and could describe three main topics during categorization (‘aims and ambitions’, thinking about a ‘calming’ scene, ‘fading away and death’). Based on our findings, presleep fantasizing is a common phenomenon. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate and categorize presleep fantasies.
The idea that respiration and attention interact with each other has been central to yogic practices for millennia. Contemporary research in cognitive neuroscience is beginning to unravel remarkable ways in which respiration modulates, and is modulated by, cognitive processes. Mounting evidence is suggesting that our ongoing respiratory rhythm may act as a physiological pacemaker for higher order functions to be entrained by. Despite many sensory-cognitive domains being investigated from this perspective, the area of ‘attention’ specifically has been sparsely researched. However, one dynamical systems model (Melnychuk et al 2018) has attempted to bridge the gap between respiration and attention via the locus coeruleus- noradrenaline (LC-NA) system, due to the crucial simultaneous roles that the LC has in the arousal and attentional system as well as the brainstem respiratory network. The present thesis aimed to corroborate initial supporting evidence for synchronisation between these systems and test predictions of this model.
Empirical Chapter 1 aimed to test whether decreasing respiratory frequency would stabilise both behavioural attention and pupil diameter (PD) oscillatory activity, compared to a spontaneously breathing control group. PD was used as a proxy measure for LC activity. A novel task was designed, the Paced Auditory Cue Entrainment (PACE) task, in which participants responded rhythmically to auditory cues, providing a continuous measure of sustained attention, and additionally, the breathing group used the cues as a breath guide, breathing in the range of 0.1 – 0.15 Hz. Despite no group differences in the variation of the timing of responses, the control group committed significantly more frequent response rhythm inversions – an exploratory accuracy variable of pressing the wrong key at the right time. The breathing group barely committed any of such errors compared to the control group. Additionally, the PD activity of the breathing group closely followed the frequency of the breathing, such that they were oscillating in the same range, implying that PD and therefore possibly LC activity was entrained by the breath intervention. From this we conclude that decreasing respiratory frequency did indeed stabilise attention, mitigating lapses, possibly through stabilising fluctuations in LC activity.
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Empirical Chapter 2 was an investigation into how attention is modulated over the respiratory cycle in a sustained attention task with no explicit respiration instructions. We used younger (YAs) and older adults (OAs) as a natural division of attentional strategy, since OAs were previously seen to show less mind wandering and more stable psychophysiological signatures of attention on this task than the YAs, however the groups sustained attention performance did not differ. We discovered here that both groups showed evidence of entraining their respiratory cycle to events in the task, however, the OAs did this to a significantly greater degree. Analysis of task performance, subjective attentional state, PD, and EEG oscillatory power, showed that all these attentional signatures were significantly modulated over the respiratory cycle. We were further able to utilise the differing attentional strategies, as well as the degree of respiratory-task entrainment, to infer the relative contributions from top-down and bottom-up influences respectively on these modulatory patterns. There appeared to be a fluctuation in attention so that conditions were optimal for task focus during the respiratory phases which were most entrained to task events, and less optimal for task focus and more geared towards mind wandering outside of the entrainment window. We interpret these findings to be evidence of respiration as an ‘attentional metronome’ of sorts, interacting with each other via the LC-NA system.
Empirical Chapter 3 utilised the data from the prior chapters to investigate how sighs (infrequent, deep breaths) are implicated in resetting suboptimal respiratory variability, corroborating previous findings, as well as testing for implications in transitioning between attentional and arousal states. Sighs here did play a significant role in resetting respiratory variability; however, no evidence was found that behavioural or experiential measures of attention were influenced. A significant association was discovered between the degree of respiratory-task entrainment and sighs, suggesting that sighs may in part function to reset entrainment-induced random respiratory variability, and facilitate further entrainment. PD was seen to undergo large changes over the course of sighs, implicating the LC-NA arousal system in sigh behaviour in humans.
Mind wandering, an experience characterized by a reduced external focus of attention and an increased internal focus, has seen significant theoretical advancement in understanding its underlying cognitive processes. The levels-of-inattention hypothesis posits that in mind wandering, external attention is reduced in a graded fashion, reflecting different levels of weak versus deep attentional decoupling. However, it has remained unclear whether internal processing during mind wandering, and mindless reading in particular, requires effort and, if so, whether it is graded or distinct. To address this, we analyzed pupil size as a measure of cognitive load in the sustained-attention-to-stimulus task during text reading. We examined whether decoupled external attention is linked to an overall reduction in workload and whether internal focus of attention is graded or represents a distinct cognitive process. Overall, overlooking errors in the text was associated with a small pupil size, indicating reduced effortful processing. However, this effect varied with error type: overlooking high- or medium-level errors (weak decoupling) resulted in reduced pupil size, while overlooking low-level errors (deep decoupling) had no effect on pupil size. Moreover, detecting an error (at any processing level) elicited a task-evoked pupillary response, which was absent when it was overlooked. These findings suggest that weak decoupling reduces internal resource-demanding processing and are in line with the hypothesis that large pupils during deep decoupling may be associated with distinct states of effortful internal processing. They further support both the levels-of-inattention hypothesis and the notion that internal focus is a distinct mode of deeply decoupled processing.
Meta-awareness is a state of deliberate attention toward the contents of conscious thought, serving as an appraisal of experiential consciousness. Meta-awareness is necessary for such uniquely human tasks as monitoring and controlling conscious thought, while lapses in meta-awareness make room for such phenomena as mind wandering and unwanted thoughts. Further, meta-awareness can be problematic because it is limited in scope and costly to maintain. Recent research on mindfulness-based meditation provides an example of a process that can cull the advantages of meta-aware states, while avoiding many of the drawbacks.
Discovered memories of abuse are often viewed with marked skepticism due to the relative dearth of well-corroborated evidence for their occurrence and the absence of a compelling theory to explain them. This article addresses these concerns by reviewing seven recovered (or, as will be explained, what I prefer to term “discovered”) memory cases in which there was independent corroborative evidence for the alleged abuse. These cases are considered within the context of a theory of meta-awareness that assumes that experiential consciousness (i.e., the contents of phenomenological experience) can be distinct from meta-awareness (i.e., one's consciousness of their consciousness). In this context, discovered memories can be understood as involving changes in individuals' meta-awareness of the abuse. In some cases, discovered memories may involve the gaining of a different meta-awareness of the meaning of an experience. The discovery of this new meaning may become confused with the discovery of the memory itself, leading to the (sometimes erroneous) belief that the memory is just now being accessed for the first time. In other cases, the discovery may involve the regaining of a prior meta-awareness of the experience that either deliberately or non-deliberately may have been avoided for some time. In still other cases, the discovery may actually involve the gaining of a previously non-existent meta-awareness of the experience. A variety of factors ranging from the very straightforward (e.g., age, lack of discussion, stress) to the more esoteric (e.g., dissociation, nocturnal cognitive processing) may prevent incidents of abuse from being initially encoded with meta-awareness. Such non-reflected memories, particularly when they are aschematic and disjunctive with other experiences, may continue to elude meta-awareness until a specific (and potentially obscure) contextual retrieval cue is encountered. Once recalled in the alarming light of meta-awareness, individuals may understand what happened to them, and this discovery may fundamentally change their view of their personal histories.
Nine previous positron emission tomography (PET) studies of human visual information processing were reanalyzed to determine the consistency across experiments of blood flow decreases during active tasks relative to passive viewing of the same stimulus array. Areas showing consistent decreases during active tasks included posterior cingulate/precuneous (Brodmann area, BA 31/7), left (BAS 40 and 39/19) and right (BA 40) inferior parietal cortex, left dorsolateral frontal cortex (BA S), left lateral inferior frontal cortex (BA 10/47), left inferior temporal gyrus @A 20), a strip of medial frontal regions running along a dorsal-ventral axis (BAs 8, 9, 10, and 32), and the right amygdala.
Experiments involving language-related processes tended to show larger decreases than nonlanguage experiments. This trend mainly reflected blood flow increases at certain areas in the passive conditions of the language experiments (relative to a fixation control in which no task stimulus was present) and slight blood flow decreases in the passive conditions of the nonlanguage experiments. When the active tasks were referenced to the fixation condition, the overall size of blood flow decreases in language and nonlanguage tasks were the same, but differences were found across cortical areas. Decreases were more pronounced in the posterior cingulate/precuneous (BAS 31/7) and right inferior parietal cortex (BA 40) during language-related tasks and more pronounced in left inferior frontal cortex (BA 10/47) during nonlanguage tasks.
Blood flow decreases did not generally show significant differences across the active task states within an experiment, but a verb-generation task produced larger decreases than a read task in right and left inferior parietal lobe (BA 40) and the posterior cingulate/precuneous (BA 31/7), while the read task produced larger decreases in left lateral inferior frontal cortex (BA 10/47). These effects mirrored those found between experiments in the language-nonlanguage comparison.
Consistent active minus passive decreases may reflect decreased activity caused by active task processes that generalize over tasks or increased activity caused by passive task processes that are suspended during the active tasks. Increased activity during the passive condition might reflect ongoing processes, such as unconstrained verbally mediated thoughts and monitoring of the external environment, body, and emotional state.
Introspection is paradoxical in that it is simultaneously so compelling yet so elusive. This paradox emerges because although experience itself is indisputable, our ability to explicitly characterize experience is often inadequate. Ultimately, the accuracy of introspective reports depends on individuals' imperfect ability to take stock (i.e., to become meta- conscious) of their experience. Although there is no ideal yardstick for assessing introspection, examination of the degree to which self-reports systematically covary with the environmental, behavioural, and physiological concomitants of experience can help to establish the correspondence between meta-consciousness and experience. We illustrate the viability of such an approach in three domains, imagery, mind-wandering, and hedonic appraisal, identifying both the situations in which introspections appear to be accurate and those in which they seem to diverge from underlying experience. We conclude with a discussion of the various factors (including issues of detection, transformation, and substitution) that may cause meta-consciousness to misrepresent experience.
This paper explores the interplay between unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious processes in social cognition. We distinguish among mental states that are (i) genuinely unaware, (ii) aware, but lack meta-awareness, and (iii) meta-aware—internally articulated as states of the perceiver. We review key studies from our own and related research programmes to highlight this theoretical framework, and to illustrate access, translational, and temporary dissociations between levels of awareness. The discussed phenomena include unconscious affect, mind-wandering, verbal overshadowing, theory-based biases in reporting of experiences, and many others. We also show how our framework can offer new perspectives on some classic social psychology findings and inspire discovery of new findings. However, we also highlight challenges inherent in establishing whether a phenomenon is genuinely unconscious or experientially conscious but lacking in meta-awareness.
When people encounter problems in translating their goals into action (e.g., failing to get started, becoming distracted, or falling into bad habits), they may strategically call on automatic processes in an attempt to secure goal attainment. This can be achieved by plans in the form of implementation intentions that link anticipated critical situations to goal-directed responses ("Whenever situation
x arises, I will initiate the goal-directed response
y!"). Implementation intentions delegate the control of goal-directed responses to anticipated situational cues, which (when actually encountered) elicit these responses automatically. A program of research demonstrates that implementation intentions further the attainment of goals, and it reveals the underlying processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A SUMMARY OF 16 PAIRED-ASSOCIATE (PA) EXPERIMENTS SHOWED THAT ALTHOUGH DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE (DP) SELDOM RESULTED IN PERFORMANCE THAT WAS SIGNIFICANT STATISTICALLY OVER THAT SHOWN UNDER MASSED PRACTICE (MP), THE PREPONDERANCE OF THE NUMERICAL DIFFERENCES FAVORED DP. A SUMMARY OF 9 COMPARISONS BETWEEN MP AND DP ON A 4TH-LEARNED LIST WITH VARIOUS INTERFERENCE PARADIGMS OBTAINING ACROSS LISTS SHOWED THAT DP WAS ALWAYS INFERIOR TO MP. THESE STUDIES FORMED THE BACKGROUND TO A STUDY OF PA LEARNING USING NAIVE SS AND IN WHICH THE VARIABLES WERE INTERTRIAL INTERVAL, SIMILARITY AMONG TRIGRAMS, DEGREE OF FREE LEARNING (FL) PRECEDING PA LEARNING, AND POSITION OF THE TRIGRAMS. THE NEUTRAL MEMBERS OF THE PAIRS WERE WORDS. WITH TRIGRAMS AS STIMULI, DP FACILITATED ONLY WITH HIGH SIMILARITY. WITH TRIGRAMS AS RESPONSE TERMS, NUMERICAL SUPERIORITY OCCURRED AT ALL LEVELS OF SIMILARITY BUT THE EFFECT WAS GREATEST WITH MEDIUM AND HIGH SIMILARITY. FL MARKEDLY FACILITATED PA LEARNING AT ALL LEVELS OF SIMILARITY FOR BOTH TRIGRAM-WORD AND WORD-TRIGRAM PAIRS, BUT IT DID NOT INTERACT WITH INTERTRIAL INTERVAL. AN ASSOCIATIVE-INHIBITION EXPLANATION OF THE DP EFFECT IS SUGGESTED. (21 REF.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Measured the production of stimulus-independent thought (e.g., fantasy and imagery) as a function of the rate at which information was presented to 50 undergraduates. Information in the form of simple tones was presented at rates from .2-6 bits/sec. The linear regression of reported stimulus-independent thought on information rate accounted for 83% of the between cell variance. Results support a model in which both sensory and memory events are operated on by a common central cognitive unit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Mind-wandering shares a number of important similarities with thinking in depression. This experiment examines whether mind-wandering provides a useful marker of cognition in dysphoria during a word learning task. Dysphoria was associated with more accessible mind-wandering when attempting to encode verbal items. In addition, in the dysphoric population, periods when the mind wandered led to greater decoupling from task-relevant processing as indexed by slower response times, and greater physiological arousal, as indexed by faster heart rates. In the general population, periods of mind-wandering when attempting to encode information were associated with poor retrieval and high skin conductance. Finally, the extent to which mind-wandering was associated with poor retrieval was associated with an individuals' latency to retrieve specific autobiographical memories from outside the laboratory. These results provide strong evidence for the utility of mind-wandering as a marker for depressive thinking and suggest a number of important implications for therapy for depression.
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Two functionally distinct, and potentially competing, brain networks have been recently identified that can be broadly distinguished by their contrasting roles in attention to the external world versus internally directed mentation involving long-term memory. At the core of these two networks are the dorsal attention system and the hippocampal-cortical memory system, a component of the brain's default network. Here spontaneous blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal correlations were used in three separate functional magnetic resonance imaging data sets (n = 105) to define a third system, the frontoparietal control system, which is spatially interposed between these two previously defined systems. The frontoparietal control system includes many regions identified as supporting cognitive control and decision-making processes including lateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal lobule. Detailed analysis of frontal and parietal cortex, including use of high-resolution data, revealed clear evidence for contiguous but distinct regions: in general, the regions associated with the frontoparietal control system are situated between components of the dorsal attention and hippocampal-cortical memory systems. The frontoparietal control system is therefore anatomically positioned to integrate information from these two opposing brain systems.
Although mind wandering during reading is extremely common, researchers have only recently begun to study how it relates to reading behavior. In the present study, we used a word-by-word reading paradigm to investigate whether it could be possible to predict in real time whether a participant would report mind wandering when probed. By taking advantage of the finding that reaction times to individual words vary based on reports of mind wandering (with participants being less affected by length, number of syllables, and familiarity, and also showing an overall speed-up, during mindless reading), we were able to develop an algorithm that could successfully predict in real time whether a participant would report being on versus off task. In addition, for participants run without thought probes, there was a significant negative correlation between the number of predicted mind-wandering episodes and reading comprehension. Together, these findings offer a key advance toward the development of pedagogical tools for minimizing the negative impact of mindless reading, and they provide a new covert measure that could be used to study mind wandering without requiring participants to report on their mental states.
Accumulating evidence suggests that the brain can efficiently process both external and internal information. The processing of internal information is a distinct "offline" cognitive mode that requires not only spontaneously generated mental activity; it has also been hypothesized to require a decoupling of attention from perception in order to separate competing streams of internal and external information. This process of decoupling is potentially adaptive because it could prevent unimportant external events from disrupting an internal train of thought. Here, we use measurements of pupil diameter (PD) to provide concrete evidence for the role of decoupling during spontaneous cognitive activity. First, during periods conducive to offline thought but not during periods of task focus, PD exhibited spontaneous activity decoupled from task events. Second, periods requiring external task focus were characterized by large task evoked changes in PD; in contrast, encoding failures were preceded by episodes of high spontaneous baseline PD activity. Finally, high spontaneous PD activity also occurred prior to only the slowest 20% of correct responses, suggesting high baseline PD indexes a distinct mode of cognitive functioning. Together, these data are consistent with the decoupling hypothesis, which suggests that the capacity for spontaneous cognitive activity depends upon minimizing disruptions from the external world.
The default mode network (DMN) is a set of brain regions that consistently shows higher activity at rest compared to tasks requiring sustained focused attention toward externally presented stimuli. The cognitive processes that the DMN possibly underlies remain a matter of debate. It has alternately been proposed that DMN activity reflects unfocused attention toward external stimuli or the occurrence of internally generated thoughts. The present study aimed at clarifying this issue by investigating the neural correlates of the various kinds of conscious experiences that can occur during task performance. Four classes of conscious experiences (i.e., being fully focused on the task, distractions by irrelevant sensations/perceptions, interfering thoughts related to the appraisal of the task, and mind-wandering) that varied along two dimensions ("task-relatedness" and "stimulus-dependency") were sampled using thought-probes while the participants performed a go/no-go task. Analyses performed on the intervals preceding each probe according to the reported subjective experience revealed that both dimensions are relevant to explain activity in several regions of the DMN, namely the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and posterior inferior parietal lobe. Notably, an additive effect of the two dimensions was demonstrated for midline DMN regions. On the other hand, lateral temporal regions (also part of the DMN) were specifically related to stimulus-independent reports. These results suggest that midline DMN regions underlie cognitive processes that are active during both internal thoughts and external unfocused attention. They also strengthen the view that the DMN can be fractionated into different subcomponents and reveal the necessity to consider both the stimulus-dependent and the task-related dimensions of conscious experiences when studying the possible functional roles of the DMN.
During concentration tasks, spontaneous attention shifts occurs towards self-centered matters. Little is known about the brain oscillatory activity underlying these mental phenomena. We recorded 128-channels electroencephalographic activity from 12 subjects performing a breath-counting task. Subjects were instructed to press a button whenever, based on their introspective experience, they realized their attention had drifted away from the task. Theta (4-7 Hz) and delta (2-3.5 Hz) EEG activity increased during mind wandering whereas alpha (9-11 Hz) and beta (15-30 Hz) decreased. A passive auditory oddball protocol was presented to the subjects to test brain-evoked responses to perceptual stimuli during mind wandering. Mismatch negativity evoked at 100 ms after oddball stimuli onset decreased during mind wandering whereas the brain-evoked responses at 200 ms after stimuli onset increased. Spectral analyses and evoked related potential results suggest decreased alertness and sensory processing during mind wandering. To our knowledge, our experiment is one of the first neuro-imaging studies that relies purely on subjects' introspective judgment, and shows that such judgment may be used to contrast different brain activity patterns.
We review evidence for partially segregated networks of brain areas that carry out different attentional functions. One system, which includes parts of the intraparietal cortex and superior frontal cortex, is involved in preparing and applying goal-directed (top-down) selection for stimuli and responses. This system is also modulated by the detection of stimuli. The other system, which includes the temporoparietal cortex and inferior frontal cortex, and is largely lateralized to the right hemisphere, is not involved in top-down selection. Instead, this system is specialized for the detection of behaviourally relevant stimuli, particularly when they are salient or unexpected. This ventral frontoparietal network works as a 'circuit breaker' for the dorsal system, directing attention to salient events. Both attentional systems interact during normal vision, and both are disrupted in unilateral spatial neglect.
Evidence indicates that the degree to which attention can be maintained upon the task in hand depends upon both the type and duration of the task. Two experiments investigated the relationship between task irrelevant thinking and block duration in two types of task. In Experiment One, a vigilance task was compared to a fluency task and in Experiment Two a verbal encoding task was compared to a fluency task. In both tasks we investigated the hypothesis that block duration mediated changes in thinking would be smallest for tasks which rely heavily on controlled processing (the fluency task). Results were consistent with expectations and indicated that the report of thoughts with no relationship to the task in hand increased with block duration in the vigilance task (Experiment One) and the verbal encoding task (Experiment Two). In neither experiment did block length effect thinking during the fluency task. These results are broadly consistent with the assertion that tasks that cannot be readily automated, maintain attention upon the task at hand in a superior fashion as the duration of the block increases. The implications of these results for our understanding of the process responsible for our conscious awareness of a stimulus and our ability to plan and anticipate events are discussed.
When not engaged in demanding tasks, we commonly experience streams of thoughts and images quite unrelated to immediate sensory input. Such stimulus-independent (SI) thoughts may be troublesome, as in worry, insomnia and depression.Previous research within a working memory paradigm suggested that SI thought production depended on central executive control resources. To explore this hypothesis further, we examined the interference with SI thought production resulting from shadowing auditorily presented digits compared to remembering them. Effects of stimulus presentation rate and size of memory load were also examined. At slow presentation rates, remembering produced more interference than shadowing. For shadowing, faster presentation produced greater interference than slow presentation. In remembering, interference was not substantially affected by size of memory load, was greater when subjects reported greater awareness of task stimuli, and was restricted to thoughts forming parts of connected sequences.The results are consistent with the view that production of connected sequences of SI thoughts depends on central executive control resources, that tasks interfere with thoughts to the extent that they make continuous demands on these resources, and that high subjective awareness of task stimuli is a marker that these resources are deployed to task management rather than thought production. The results are not consistent with Antro-bus' view that interference with SI thoughts by tasks is simply a function of the rate of processing information from external sources required by the task.
29 undergraduates carrying a beeper for 7 days described properties of their consciousness on a total of 1,425 occasions by means of a thought-sampling questionnaire, anxiety and depression measures, and activity report forms. Intra-S analyses of thought variables identified 8 orthogonal factors: Visual Modality, Auditory Modality, Operantness, Attentiveness to External Stimulation, Controllability, Strangeness, Past Time Orientation, and Future Time Orientation. Most thought samples contained some interior monologue largely independent of other variables. The visual modality predominated for most individuals. Approximately one-third of thought was predominantly undirected, one-third was stimulus-independent, and about one-quarter contained at least traces of dream-like elements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In "Losing Control," the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study examined the influence of acute alcohol on attentional lapses whilst performing a sustained attention task (SART). The sample consisted of 17 male and seven females. A dose of alcohol achieving 80mg/100ml was administered to subjects before completion of the task. Alcohol led participants to make more errors as the session progressed and report a greater incidence of mind wandering. Importantly, alcohol reduced individuals' ability to recover from a lapse in attention. Although the sample size is small, the study did enable us to gain insight into the detrimental effects of acute alcohol ingestion on mind wandering. The authors anticipate that through the use of thought probes in the context of the SART and a larger sample size, we hope to shed further light on this phenomenon.
Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the threat of a negative stereotype increases the frequency of mind-wandering (i.e., task-unrelated thought), thereby leading to performance impairments. Study 1 demonstrated that participants anticipating a stereotype-laden test mind-wandered more during the Sustained Attention to Response Task. Study 2 assessed mind-wandering directly using thought sampling procedures during a demanding math test. Results revealed that individuals experiencing stereotype threat experienced more off-task thoughts, which accounted for their poorer test performance compared to a control condition. These studies highlight the important role that social forces can have on mind-wandering. More specifically, these results serve as evidence for task-unrelated thought as a novel mechanism for stereotype threat-induced performance impairments.
Insufficient attention to tasks can result in slips of action as automatic, unintended action sequences are triggered inappropriately. Such slips arise in part from deficits in sustained attention, which are particularly likely to happen following frontal lobe and white matter damage in traumatic brain injury (TBI). We present a reliable laboratory paradigm that elicits such slips of action and demonstrates high correlations between the severity of brain damage and relative-reported everyday attention failures in a group of 34 TBI patients. We also demonstrate significant correlations between self-and informant-reported everyday attentional failures and performance on this paradigm in a group of 75 normal controls. The paradigm (the Sustained Attention to Response Task—SART) involves the withholding of key presses to rare (one in nine) targets. Performance on the SART correlates significantly with performance on tests of sustained attention, but not other types of attention, supporting the view that this is indeed a measure of sustained attention. We also show that errors (false presses) 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. We also report a highly significant correlation of −0.58 between SART performance and Glasgow Coma Scale Scores in the TBI group.
When the mind wanders to unrelated thoughts and feelings while reading, the eyes often continue to scan the words without due attention to their meaning. This mindless reading, similar to states such as daydreaming or absentminded lapses, is a state of decoupled processing in which attention to ongoing perceptual information is reduced often in favor of the active consideration of internally generated thoughts and feelings. Normal reading involves a complex interaction between bottom-up representations of the text that is being read and top-down representations of the more general context that help to keep the readers mind on what they are doing. Since states of decoupling involve a reduced processing of sensory information, the coupling between the reader and the text breaks down during mindless reading. This reduced external coupling is one reason why mind-wandering during reading has significant implications for reading comprehension. Following the presentation of a model of the decoupled state and a specific consideration of mind-wandering during reading, five key unresolved issues for future research in mindless reading are identified.
The two core assumptions of the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control during reading are that: (1) a preliminary stage of lexical access (i.e., the familiarity check) triggers the initiation of a saccadic program to move the eyes from one word to ...
Evidence suggests that mind wandering is a frequent accompaniment to an unhappy mood. Building on such work, two laboratory experiments used mood induction to assess whether the greater frequency of mind wandering in a low mood is also accompanied by a shift towards a focus on events from the past. Experiment 1 induced moods via video and induction of an unhappy mood was associated with a greater tendency for past-related mind wandering as measured by a post-task questionnaire. In Experiment 2, negative and positive moods were induced in a group of participants using the Velten mood-induction procedure and the temporal focus of mind wandering was measured using experience sampling probes. Analyses indicated that induction of an unhappy mood led to an increase in past-related mind wandering and the magnitude of this change increased with scores on a measure of depressive symptoms. Together these experiments suggest that when the mind wanders in an unhappy mood it is drawn to events from its past.
Recent real-time fMRI (rt-fMRI) training studies have demonstrated that subjects can achieve improved control over localized brain regions by using real-time feedback about the level of fMRI signal in these regions. It has remained unknown, however, whether subjects can gain control over anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions that support some of the most complex forms of human thought. In this study, we used rt-fMRI training to examine whether subjects can learn to regulate the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC), or the lateral part of the anterior PFC, by using a meta-cognitive awareness strategy. We show that individuals can achieve improved regulation over the level of fMRI signal in their RLPFC by turning attention towards or away from their own thoughts. The ability to achieve improved modulation was contingent on observing veridical real-time feedback about the level of RLPFC activity during training; a sham-feedback control group demonstrated no improvement in modulation ability and neither did control subjects who received no rt-fMRI feedback but underwent otherwise identical training. Prior to training, meta-cognitive awareness was associated with recruitment of anterior PFC subregions, including both RLPFC and medial PFC, as well as a number of other midline and posterior cortical regions. Following training, however, regulation improvement was specific to RLPFC and was not observed in other frontal, midline, or parietal cortical regions. These results demonstrate the feasibility of acquiring control over high-level prefrontal regions through rt-fMRI training and offer a novel view into the correspondence between observable neuroscientific measures and highly subjective mental states.
We developed a smartphone technology to sample people’s ongoing thoughts, feelings, and actions and found (i) that people
are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and (ii) found that doing so typically
makes them unhappy.
The present study performed a quantitative meta-analysis of functional MRI studies that used a subsequent memory approach. The meta-analysis considered both subsequent memory (SM; remembered>forgotten) and subsequent forgetting (SF; forgotten>remembered) effects, restricting the data used to that concerning visual information encoding in healthy young adults. The meta-analysis of SM effects indicated that they most consistently associated with five neural regions: left inferior frontal cortex (IFC), bilateral fusiform cortex, bilateral hippocampal formation, bilateral premotor cortex (PMC), and bilateral posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Direct comparisons of the SM effects between the studies using verbal versus pictorial material and item-memory versus associative-memory tasks yielded three main sets of findings. First, the left IFC exhibited greater SM effects during verbal material than pictorial material encoding, whereas the fusiform cortex exhibited greater SM effects during pictorial material rather than verbal material encoding. Second, bilateral hippocampal regions showed greater SM effects during pictorial material encoding compared to verbal material encoding. Furthermore, the left hippocampal region showed greater SM effects during pictorial-associative versus pictorial-item encoding. Third, bilateral PMC and PPC regions, which may support attention during encoding, exhibited greater SM effects during item encoding than during associative encoding. The meta-analysis of SF effects indicated they associated mostly with default-mode network regions, including the anterior and posterior midline cortex, the bilateral temporoparietal junction, and the bilateral superior frontal cortex. Recurrent activity oscillations between the task-positive and task-negative/default-mode networks may account for trial-to-trial variability in participants' encoding performances, which is a fundamental source of both SM and SF effects. Taken together, these findings clarify the neural activity that supports successful encoding, as well as the neural activity that leads to encoding failure.
Mindless reading occurs when the eyes continue moving across the page even though the mind is thinking about something unrelated to the text. Despite how commonly it occurs, very little is known about mindless reading. The present experiment examined eye movements during mindless reading. Comparisons of fixation-duration measures collected during intervals of normal reading and intervals of mindless reading indicate that fixations during the latter were longer and less affected by lexical and linguistic variables than fixations during the former. Also, eye movements immediately preceding self-caught mind wandering were especially erratic. These results suggest that the cognitive processes that guide eye movements during normal reading are not engaged during mindless reading. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of eye movement control in reading, for the distinction between experiential awareness and meta-awareness, and for reading comprehension.
Tasks that demand externalized attention reliably suppress default network activity while activating the dorsal attention network. These networks have an intrinsic competitive relationship; activation of one suppresses activity of the other. Consequently, many assume that default network activity is suppressed during goal-directed cognition. We challenge this assumption in an fMRI study of planning. Recent studies link default network activity with internally focused cognition, such as imagining personal future events, suggesting a role in autobiographical planning. However, it is unclear how goal-directed cognition with an internal focus is mediated by these opposing networks. A third anatomically interposed 'frontoparietal control network' might mediate planning across domains, flexibly coupling with either the default or dorsal attention network in support of internally versus externally focused goal-directed cognition, respectively. We tested this hypothesis by analyzing brain activity during autobiographical versus visuospatial planning. Autobiographical planning engaged the default network, whereas visuospatial planning engaged the dorsal attention network, consistent with the anti-correlated domains of internalized and externalized cognition. Critically, both planning tasks engaged the frontoparietal control network. Task-related activation of these three networks was anatomically consistent with independently defined resting-state functional connectivity MRI maps. Task-related functional connectivity analyses demonstrate that the default network can be involved in goal-directed cognition when its activity is coupled with the frontoparietal control network. Additionally, the frontoparietal control network may flexibly couple with the default and dorsal attention networks according to task domain, serving as a cortical mediator linking the two networks in support of goal-directed cognitive processes.