Attention Restraint, Working Memory Capacity, and Mind Wandering: Do Emotional Valence or Intentionality Matter?

Attention restraint appears to mediate the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and mind wandering (Kane et al., 2016). Prior work has identifed two dimensions of mind wandering—emotional valence and intentionality. However, less is known about how WMC and attention restraint correlate with these dimensions. Te current study examined the relationship between WMC, attention restraint, and mind wandering by emotional valence and intentionality. A confrmatory factor analysis demonstrated that WMC and attention restraint were strongly correlated, but only attention restraint was related to overall mind wandering, consistent with prior fndings. However, when examining the emotional valence of mind wandering, attention restraint and WMC were related to negatively and positively valenced, but not neutral, mind wandering. Attention restraint was also related to intentional but not unintentional mind wandering. Tese results suggest that WMC and attention restraint predict some, but not all, types of mind wandering

Evaluating the construct validity of sustained attention measures : performance indicators, self-report indicators, and their covariation

The ability to sustain attention is a fundamental cognitive process that is required for many everyday activities. Current measurement approaches focus on either objective behavioral indicators (like reaction time [RT] variability or task accuracy) or subjective self-reports of task unrelated thoughts (TUTs) as being suitable assessments for sustained attention. However, both types of indicators come with their own unique sources of measurement error, which reduce our accuracy in measuring sustained attention ability and weaken the conclusions we can draw from their findings. In this integrated dissertation, three papers are presented to argue that the covariation between objective and subjective indicators is a more construct-valid way to measure the ability to sustain attention than is either indicator type on its own. The results generally supported this claim, with some caveats. Theoretical implications, remaining concerns, and future directions are discussed to further improve the measurement of sustained attention ability

Individual Differences in Dimensions of Mind Wandering: The Mediating Role of Emotional Valence and Intentionality

Individual differences in executive control ability reliably show that those with greater executive control report fewer instances of mind wandering during moderately demanding tasks. However, these findings have been limited in that they often treated mind wandering as a variable that collapsed across a variety of thought categories or dimensions. We suggest that two dimensions of mind wandering, intentionality and emotional valence, may be differential related to individual difference in executive control ability. The present study examined this using multiple measures of working memory capacity and attentional control while measuring emotional valence and intentionality of mind wandering during a single sustained attention task. Non-cognitive predictors of mind wandering were also measured. Overall, the results suggest that both working memory capacity and attention control are significant predictors of mind wandering propensity, replicating previous findings. However, the dimensions of emotional valence and intentionality suggested that this finding was not consistent across all types of thought reports. The current findings provide support for the view that it is critical to consider these two dimensions, among other important dimensions, of mind wandering to have a more complete understanding of individual differences in mind wandering

Age-Related Differences in Mind Wandering: The Role of Emotional Valence.

OBJECTIVES: Older adults consistently report fewer experiences of mind wandering compared to younger adults. Aging is also associated with a shift in the emotional focus of our thoughts, with Older adults tending to experience an increase in attention towards positive information, or a positivity bias, relative to younger adults. Here, we tested if the positivity bias associated with aging can also predict age-related changes in the content of older adults\u27 mind wandering. METHOD: Older adults and younger adults completed a go/no-go task with periodic thought probes to assess rates of emotionally valenced mind wandering. RESULTS: Older adults reported significantly less negatively and neutrally valenced mind wandering compared to younger adults, but there was no age difference in reports of positively valenced mind wandering. Overall rates of mind wandering predicted poorer task performance for both age groups: Individuals who mind wandered more, performed worse, but this did not differ by the emotional valence. Both older adults and younger adults showed similar in-the-moment performance deficits with mind wandering reports being associated with worse immediate no-go accuracy and faster reaction times. DISCUSSION: Focusing on different dimensions of thought content, such as emotional valence, can provide new insight into age-related differences in mind wandering. Older adults mind wandering reports were less negative and neutral compared to younger adults suggesting a positivity bias for older adults. However, this positivity bias does not seem to impact task performance. We discuss the implications of the findings for mind wandering theories and the positivity bias

Mindfulness, Anxiety, Mind Wandering, and Self-Reported Cognitive Functioning: A Latent Variable Examination

We examined the impact of dispositional mindfulness on self-reported anxiety, mind wandering, and cognitive functioning across multiple samples. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the factors had moderate to strong correlations with each other. Specifically, self-reported mindfulness was associated with less anxiety and mind wandering and better cognitive functioning. Further, structural equation models indicated that while mindfulness has a direct impact on anxiety, ,mind wandering, and cognitive functioning, the impact on cognitive functioning was mediated by self-reported mind wandering. In an MTurk sample collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, mindfulness did not predict anxiety, mind wandering or cognitive functioning. However, mind wandering mediated the relationship between anxiety and cognitive functioning. The results will be discussed in terms of the impact of dispositional mindfulness on self-reported cognitive functioning

The Worst Performance Rule, or the Not-Best Performance Rule? Latent-Variable Analyses of Working Memory Capacity, Mind-Wandering Propensity, and Reaction Time

The worst performance rule (WPR) is a robust empirical finding reflecting that people’s worst task performance shows numerically stronger correlations with cognitive ability than their average or best performance. However, recent meta-analytic work has proposed this be renamed the “not-best performance” rule because mean and worst performance seem to predict cognitive ability to similar degrees, with both predicting ability better than best performance. We re-analyzed data from a previously published latent-variable study to test for worst vs. not-best performance across a variety of reaction time tasks in relation to two cognitive ability constructs: working memory capacity (WMC) and propensity for task-unrelated thought (TUT). Using two methods of assessing worst performance—ranked-binning and ex-Gaussian-modeling approaches—we found evidence for both the worst and not-best performance rules. WMC followed the not-best performance rule (correlating equivalently with mean and longest response times (RTs)) but TUT propensity followed the worst performance rule (correlating more strongly with longest RTs). Additionally, we created a mini-multiverse following different outlier exclusion rules to test the robustness of our findings; our findings remained stable across the different multiverse iterations. We provisionally conclude that the worst performance rule may only arise in relation to cognitive abilities closely linked to (failures of) sustained attention