The diversity of mind wandering : The role of individual differences and cognitive factors

Many individuals spend a substantial portion of their waking time thinking about topics unrelated to current activities and surroundings (mind wandering). This dissertation sought to contribute to our knowledge of why some people mind wander more than others. Mind wandering in cognitive tasks is more common in individuals with poor executive cognitive control (working memory updating, inhibiting task-inappropriate response, shifting between tasks), but these studies have paid little attention to the variety of contents of mind wandering and individual differences moderators. Individuals vary in how much they find their mind wandering enjoyable or helpful (a positive mind wandering style) or dysphoric and anguished (a negative style). Paper I tested whether positive or negative styles of mind wandering moderated the relation between executive control and mind wandering, which could help reconcile two cognitive hypotheses of mind wandering. The control-failure hypothesis suggests that mind wandering occurs because of disruptions in executive control, whereas the global availability hypothesis suggests that the availability of executive resources fosters mind wandering. The results indicated that the relation between working memory capacity and mind wandering depended on a negative mind wandering style: Those individuals with a high-negative mind wandering style exhibited a negative relation between working memory and mind wandering (consistent with the control-failure hypothesis), whereas the relation was positive in those with a low-negative style (consistent with the global availability hypothesis). Paper II evaluated affect and cognitive variables by relating mind wandering during a signal detection task to individual differences in negative affectivity (neuroticism) and self-regulatory abilities. Mind wandering was associated with neuroticism and low effortful control, but not with shifting ability. Regression analyses indicated that effortful control predicted lower neutral mind wandering whereas neuroticism predicted negative mind wandering. The subsequent two papers extended this research by examining mind wandering, affect, and control in selected populations. A trait relevant to attentional control and negative affect is dissociation, which includes amnesia and experiential disconnectedness from self/others (detachment). Paper III evaluated everyday mentation in people scoring high or low in dissociation and in hypnotic suggestibility (hypnotizability). Mind wandering episodes were characterized by a reduced sense of control/awareness of mentations, especially in those scoring high on both hypnotizability and dissociation. Paper IV applied attachment theory to study everyday mentations in adults with childhood exposures to traumatizing events. A negative mind wandering style and everyday experiences of dissociation, negative affect, and low control/awareness were associated with a self-report, but not a discourse, measure of unresolved/disorganized attachment. The latter construct did not predict overall amount of mind wandering. The results of this dissertation help integrate cognitive hypotheses of mind wandering within broader cognitive, affective, and developmental frameworks. I suggest that mind wandering consists of different subtypes that operate through different cognitive processes in which one is characterized by neutral or negative affect, poor working memory monitoring, and low effortful control, and appears more often in high dissociative/ high hypnotizable individuals, whereas another subtype is characterized by positive affect but is less clear in its relation to executive functioning

A daily diary study on maladaptive daydreaming, mind wandering, and sleep disturbances: Examining within-person and between-persons relations

Cross-sectional and experimental research have shown that task-unrelated thoughts (i.e., mind wandering) relate to sleep disturbances, but there is little research on whether this association generalizes to the day-level and other kinds of task-unrelated mentation. We employed a longitudinal daily diary design to examine the within-person and between-person associations between three self-report instruments measuring mind wandering, maladaptive daydreaming (a condition characterized by having elaborate fantasy daydreams so insistent that they interfere with daily functioning) and sleep disturbances. A final sample of 126 participants self-identified as experiencing maladaptive daydreaming completed up to 8 consecutive daily reports (in total 869 daily observations). The scales showed acceptable-to-excellent within-person reliability (i.e., systematic day-to-day change) and excellent between-person reliability. The proportion of between-person variance was 36% for sleep disturbances, 57% for mind wandering, and 75% for maladaptive daydreaming, respectively (the remaining being stochastic and systematic within-person variance). Contrary to our pre-registered hypothesis, maladaptive daydreaming did not significantly predict sleep disturbances the following night, B = -0.00 (SE = 0.04), p =.956. Exploratory analyses indicated that while nightly sleep disturbances predicted mind wandering the following day, B = 0.20 (SE = 0.04), p <.001, it did not significantly predict maladaptive daydreaming the following day, B = -0.04 (SE = 0.05), p =.452. Moreover, daily mind wandering did not significantly predict sleep disturbances the following night, B = 0.02 (SE = 0.05), p =.731. All variables correlated at the between-person level. We discuss the implications concerning the differences between maladaptive daydreaming and mind wandering and the possibility of targeting sleep for mind wandering interventions

Two Replication Studies of a Time-Reversed (Psi) Priming Task and the Role of Expectancy in Reaction Times

Two experiments involving an international collaboration ofexperimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously publishedpsi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focusof extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause–e! ectsequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reactiontimes. The preregistered con" rmatory hypothesis is that response timesto incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruentstimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participantrecords their judgments. The con" rmatory hypothesis for Experiment 1was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participantswho completed the English-language version rather than a translationshowed a signi" cant e! ect, as was the case in the original study; nosigni" cant departure from chance was found in data involving non-English translations. Experiment 2 sought to enhance the predicted e! ectby having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statementat the beginning of the experiment to test the hypothesis that a pro-psistatement would produce a larger e! ect than an anti-psi statement. Theresults did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no e! ectin the English-language sample. However, there was mixed support forthe e! ect of the psi statement on performance; those participants whoreceived the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those whoreceived the anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neitherthe experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs were consistently associatedwith the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered con" rmatoryhypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personalityvariable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlateof psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implicationsfor international collaborations and replication in controversial science

Daydreaming style moderates the relation between working memory and mind wandering: Integrating two hypotheses.

Mind wandering—mentation unrelated to one’s current activity and surroundings—is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but seemingly competing ideas have been proposed regarding its relation to executive cognitive processes. The control-failure hypothesis postulates that executive processes prevent mind wandering, whereas the global availability hypothesis proposes that mind wandering requires executive resources, and thus an excess of such resources enables mind wandering. Here, we examined whether these hypotheses could be reconciled by considering the moderating influence of daydreaming style. We expected that executive resources would be positively related to mind wandering in those who typically experience positive mind wandering mentation, but negatively related in those who typically experience negative mentation. One hundred eleven participants reported mind wandering over 4 days using experience sampling and completed the sustained attention to response task (SART), the symmetry span task, and the Stroop task. There was a significant interaction between working memory and negative, but not positive, daydreaming style on mind wandering: Working memory related positively to mind wandering in those with a low negative style, but negatively in those with a high negative style. In contrast, poor Stroop performance significantly predicted increased mind wandering, but only in those with a low positive style. SART responses did not predict mind wandering although the relation was suggestively enhanced as the difficulty of daily life activities increased, indicating that the SART is more generalizable to high-demanding than low-demanding activities. These results suggest that the content and context of mind wandering episodes play important roles in the relation between executive processes and mind wandering

Mind Wandering and Sleep in Daily Life: A Combined Actigraphy and Experience Sampling Study

Individuals who sleep poorly report spending more time mind wandering during the day. However, past research has relied on self-report measures of sleep or measured mind wandering during laboratory tasks, which prevents generalization to everyday contexts. We used ambulatory assessments to examine the relations between several features of sleep (duration, fragmentation, and disturbances) and mind wandering (task-unrelated, stimulus-independent, and unguided thoughts). Participants wore a wristband device that collected actigraphy and experience-sampling data across 7 days and 8 nights. Contrary to our expectations, task-unrelated and stimulus-independent thoughts were not associated with sleep either within- or between-persons (n = 164). Instead, individual differences in unguided thoughts were associated with sleep disturbances and duration, suggesting that individuals who more often experience unguided train-of- thoughts have greater sleep disturbances and sleep longer. These results highlight the need to consider the context and features of mind wandering when relating it to sleep

The contribution of latent factors of executive functioning to mind wandering: An experience sampling study

Accumulating evidence suggests that individuals with greater executive resources spend less time mind wandering. Independent strands of research further suggest that this association depends on concentration and a guilty-dysphoric daydreaming style. However, it remains unclear whether this association is specific to particular features of executive functioning or certain operationalizations of mind wandering, including task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs, comprising external distractions and mind wandering) and stimulusindependent and task-unrelated thoughts (SITUTs, comprising mind wandering only). This study sought to clarify these associations by using confirmatory factor analysis to compute latent scores for distinct executive functioning based on nine cognitive tasks and relating them to experience sampling reports of mind wandering. We expected that individuals with greater executive control (specifically updating) would show a stronger reduction in SITUTs as momentary concentration and guilty-dysphoric style increase. A bifactor model of the cognitive battery indicated a general factor (common executive function) and ancillary factors (updating and shifting). A significant interaction between updating and concentration on mind wandering was observed with mind wandering defined as TUTs, but not as SITUTs (N = 187). A post-hoc analysis clarified this discrepancy by showing that as concentration increases, both external distractions and mind wandering decrease more strongly among people with greater updating. Moreover, common executive function predicted a more negative slope of guilty-dysphoric style on SITUTs, whereas updating and shifting predicted more positive slopes. The opposite slopes of these executive functions on daily life mind wandering may reflect a stability-flexibility trade-off between goal maintenance and goal replacement abilities

Time contracts and temporal precision declines when the mind wanders

Our perception of time varies considerably from moment to moment but how this variability relates to endogenous fluctuations in attentional states remains poorly understood. Here we tested the hypothesis that perceptual decoupling during mind wandering would distort interval timing. In two studies with different visual interval timing paradigms, we found that mind wandering states were characterized by underestimation of intervals and a decline in temporal discrimination. Further analyses suggested that temporal contraction during mind wandering, but not a decline in temporal discrimination, could be attributed in part to attentional lapses. These results highlight the role of transient fluctuations in attentional states in intra-individual variability in time perception and have implications for the behavioral markers, and costs and benefits, of mind wandering

Two Replication Studies of a Time-Reversed (Psi) Priming Task and the Role of Expectancy in Reaction Times

Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause–effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that response times to incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruent stimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participant records their judgments. The confirmatory hypothesis for Experiment 1 was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participants who completed the English-language version rather than a translation showed a significant effect, as was the case in the original study; no significant departure from chance was found in data involving non- English translations. Experiment 2 sought to enhance the predicted effect by having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statement at the beginning of the experiment to test the hypothesis that a pro-psi statement would produce a larger effect than an anti-psi statement. The results did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no effect in the English-language sample. However, there was mixed support for the effect of the psi statement on performance; those participants who received the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those who received the anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neither the experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs were consistently associated with the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personality variable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlate of psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implications for international collaborations and replication in controversial science