Talk:Mind-wandering

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2020 and 25 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mckaymclelland.

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Untitled
Hi Ed, thanks for the help with the entry. Its a great tip to have written off line before sharing it with the community. Thanks also for your nice comments on our work. As I mentioned, we have a psychological bulletin review coming out (we are about to get the proofs) I am going to incorporate that into the entry when its published, I just thought I should get one going. I can send you a copy of the proofs if you are interested. my email is jsmallwood@psych.ubc.ca (I am finishing of a post doc at ubc before going back to aberdeen in a month or so) - feel free to email me if you like.

Hi Jonny, I've now downloaded some of your papers, and I see that you were being modest when you said "several". It's a nice body of work you're doing there, and I think that you should be able to incorporate more of it into the wikipedia article. Just remember to cite your articles, just like anywhere else, and you should be fine Citing_sources. I think the best thing to do from here is to focus on explaining the concepts to non-specialists. Also, you may want to do a lot of your editing offline and then upload and save changes after major edits. In that way, you can take advantage of spellcheck (typocheck) and you'll avoid what happened with this article, which is that it got RfD'd three times while you were still writing the draft. Otherwise, you can always use preview instead of save, if you just want to see how the article is progressing. Edhubbard 14:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok Jonny, This entry should now be more like a standard wikipedia article, which should spare you any further RfDs. You'll see that I rewrote the first paragraph, so that instead of being in the second person ("you" and "your") it is now in the third person, which fits better with the idea of neutral point of view. I have also put the keyword at the beginnig of the very first sentence, as is done on most pages. Similarly, the addition of references makes it much less likely that you will face another RfD because you are presenting something that looks like original research. In this case, as you are an expert in this field, you should pay special attention to this section here Expert Editors, which deals with the sometimes complicated relationship between no research and having researchers edit.

There's probably some more stuff that you cand add, clean up, or even correct, but at least this gives you a template to work from. Finally, on talk pages, you should sign your posts with four tildes (~) so that it puts your user name and the time that you posted). You'll find that there are a lot of rules, but the vast majority of them can be understood to be in the service of complete transparancy.  Everything we save is recorded, everything we delete is recorded, but then, if there are ever any debates or problems, there is a clear electron trail that people can follow... Happy Wikipedia-ing.   Edhubbard 22:02, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

HI Ed

Sounds good. I havent ever made any wikipedia pages so I could sure use all the help i can get.

Jonny

Hi Jon, Nice to meet you. Given that this article has been RfD'd twice, I guess we'd better get to cleaning it up! I'm happy to do a few wikipedia things, so that it can pass muster. Edhubbard 21:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ed

I am a neuroscientist and a faculty member at Aberdeen University, I have published several articles on mind-wandering in peer reviewed journals, including a review article that is forthcoming in Psychological Bulletin. The article is at the proof stage at the momment, so I didnt want to link to the journal yet. I am actually one of the authors on the APS talk that you mention. I will certainly take your suggestions on board.

J

Hello Jonsmallwood2004,

I am one of the contributors to the attention page, and saw your recent addition of the link to mind-wandering. Several things jump out at me when looking at this entry. As Merope had mentioned, mind-wandering seems to be a neologism. In order to verify, I ran a search in Pubmed, which is the free online listing of all medical sciences articles. My search turned up exactly one hit, with the authors that you mention in your entry.

Mindwandering

A similar search in google turns up exactly the same pubmed site I've referrred to above, and an American Psychological Association symposium on the topic from this year: APA Mindwandering.

So, perhaps the term is catching on, but it doesn't yet seem to be a standard psychological topic.

A search for the first author, Antrobus, turns up substantially more hits in peer reviewed journals: Antrobus at Pubmed but this is somewhat difficult to be certain that this is the same person, given the 13 year gap, and the fact that some articles cite Antrobus, JS and Antrobus, JS as authors. Thus there are two people who seem to work on similar topics (REM sleep and "daydreaming" or "spontaneous thought"). The fact that this term seems to be non-standard English, and that your entry also has multiple grammar and spelling errors suggests that perhaps you are coming from outside the US (I checked for a user page for you, and there isn't one)? If so, perhaps I can help to clarify the English. I might also suggest that mindwandering is perhaps not the best term, despite its growing usse. Perhaps "spontaneous thought" or some other such term would be better.

However, you are right to link spontanous thought with the default network as suggested by Raichle. This is also something that fits with Global Workspace models of consciousness, which perhaps could also be cited. Edhubbard 16:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 September 2019 and 12 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rayray411.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:13, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

This article does not have intext citations Wikipedia requires for proper referencing
Per Verifiability, Reliable sources, Citing sources you must have intext citations if you do not want material removed from your article. Any editor can remove unsourced material from you article without explanation if it is not sourced. The burden is on the editor to justify the material included. I advise you to cite the article properly to protect your material. Sincerely, Mattisse 02:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Matisse. I think the problem is not a lack of citations, but perhaps that you are not used to their format. The current version of the article contains the following in-text citations:
 * Antrobus J.S., Singer, J.L., Goldstein, S., Fortgang, M. (1970). Mindwandering and cognitive structure. Trans N Y Acad Sci. 32(2):242-252.
 * Baars, Bernard (1988), A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press)
 * Baars, Bernard (1997), In the Theater of Consciousness (New York, NY: Oxford University Press)
 * Dehaene, S. & Changeux, J.-P. (2005). Ongoing spontaneous activity controls access to consciousness: A neuronal model for inattentional blindness. PLoS Biology, 3(5):e141.
 * Gusnard, D.A. & Raichle, M.E. (2001). Searching for a baseline: functional imaging and the resting human brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2(10):685-694.
 * Smallwood, J.M., Baracaia, S.F., Lowe, M., Obonsawin, M. (2003). Task unrelated thought whilst encoding information. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(3):452-84.
 * Smallwood J and Schooler JW (2006). The Restless Mind. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 6, 946 -958.
 * This makes a total of 6 peer-reviewed primary research articles. Each of them is cited, using the common author-date format in the body of the article.  For an article of this length, six citations is not bad, although the article, and the reference section certainly can be expanded.  It seems that the problem is, as I have said in my edit comments, not a lack of references, but perhaps a matter of format.  What format would make you happy?  Or, better yet, perhaps you'd care to just change the format to one you like?  Edhubbard 02:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Wikipedia has standards for formating references and footnotes citations. There are reasons for those standards. One is that any readers must be able to find the reference that you are citing. That meaning giving page numbers for each citation (if it is a book) for every statement cited. Your references are very vague and some are misleading. I would like to turn to a page and see if what you are talking about is true, whether the authors references were talking about the same thing you are. I do not think they are, being familiar with the authors cited. Sincerely, Mattisse 13:19, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Matisse, I am quite aware of wikipedia's standard, but I am still not clear that I have understood your objection.  In any case, I have spent some time now to change the reference style to the more traditional references seen on other wikipedia articles, and have added the pubmed ids to all of the peer-reviewed articles.  As for the refereences being misleading, I am not sure which ones you are thinking of.  The ones to Jonathan Smallwood's work were first added by him when he created the page.  Do you mean the Baars references, then, since those are the only books mentioned in the article?  These are somewhat unusual in that they are general references to Baars overall body of work, on which the current investigations build.  They are included to indicate Baars' historical priority, but I have tried to make it clear that this is modern work that builds on his.  As such, there is no one page that is relevant, but rather the entire body of work summarized in those books.  You'll see that there is still one citation needed tag, which I will get back to tomorrow.  In the meantime, though, I don't think that there is any need to put a tag the top of the article for that one citation.  I have also tried to clean up the tone, and the numerous redundancies that were present in the article, include some newer studies, and overall improve the flow of the entry.  I took the liberty of removing the expert tag, both because of the edits I made, and because I hold a dual PhD in experimental psychology and cognitive science from UCSD.  I am happy to try to improve the article if you see additional things that need to be done, but please be specific in your comments.  Edhubbard 08:06, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You have improved the article substantially and my objections are on hold for the moment. I am wondering though how I managed to get through years of postgraduate education (including the study of Singer) and more years of clinical practice without reading of or hearing the term "mind-wandering" used formally even once. Is it in DSM-IV? How does it differ from the various forms of ADD? Where is it listed as a formal term?  Sincerely,  Mattisse 14:13, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Matisse, I am glad that I've satisfied your objections here. This doesn't mean the article is done, as new research is continuing to appear (for example, I am pretty sure I saw another fMRI study appear recently) and I still feel like some of the writing is awkward.  More can be done on it.  As for why you never stumbled across this in your clinical psychology work, there are probably two factors here.  First, this is really a specialized topic within experimental psychology, and within that, the study of attention and consciousness which have exploded over the past 20 years or so.  That is, as a topic in experimental psychology, nobody is diagnosed with this, and it does not appear in the DSM (any version) since we all do it (people with ADD may do it to a greater degree, but I am not aware of any studies that have specifially tested this).  Most topics in experimental psychology are things we all do, like perception, memory, and even mindwandering, and so don't appear.  Second even within experimental psychology, this is a topic which only has begun to attract a lot of attention within the community in the past five years, so it is likely that unless you did your studies in the past five years, this is something that wouldn't have appeared in your lectures.  For another example of a topic that I have worked on (both on wikipedia and in real life), which doesn't appear in the DSM-IV, see the synesthesia entry.  Synesthesia is not something we all do, but as it does not interfere with daily functioning, it also doesn't appear in the DSM.  As for Singer in particular, this does not appear to have been a major topic in his work, but he is second author on the 1970 paper with Antrobus; perhaps this is something he did during his studies, but did not pursue afterwards.  Edhubbard 16:38, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I had whole courses on memory, perception, habituation etc. and synesthesia is a familiar term from neuropsychology. The concept of mind wandering (or mind-wandering) is  familiar across fields under many different rubics. But if it is now a formal field of study under that name and you have the references, then great. I'll look forward to seeing what you have to say.   Sincerely, Mattisse 16:55, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that's exactly right... mind-wandering is something that has been part of many discussions when talking about various other things, but has only recently started to become the focus of experimental investigations in its own right, instead of a problem to be dealt with or avoided in other investigations. In some sense, the very idea of studying mind-wandering runs contrary to the traditional logic in experimental psychology. As you know,normally, we carefully control the stimuli, and examine overt behavioral responses.  In mind-wandering research, the whole idea is that we are interested in things that specifically escape that control, and that have no overt behavioral manifestations unless we ask people to report on them in some way.  Perhaps this should be clarified in the article.  Also, as I was thinking of it, I meant to explain the SART task in the article. I'm pleasantly surprised that you have heard of synesthesia, as I know at least one synesthete who reported her experiences her psychiatrist after a schizophrenic break and he changed her medication multiple times, attempting to eliminate what he thought were lingering symptoms of schizophrenia.  Edhubbard 17:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Please don't confuse psychologist and psychiatrists! --Mattisse 17:42, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * :-) Edhubbard 18:07, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

The use of "one" is considered the first person
Wikipedia standards require that WP:OR be avoided and therefore the use of the first person. Sincerely, Mattisse 13:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Misleading reference citation
In particular, the first reference citation seems to reference William James. However, the reference when I checked it does not mention William James, and I have never read in any of the work of William James his use of the term "Mind-wandering". Yes, William James discusses various issues of consciousness, but not "mind-wandering" as conceived in this article -- even though the concept in this article is overly broad and could include almost any researcher's work on attention. Is "mind-wandering" supposed to be a super category encompassing all topics of attention? Please correct the misleading reference. --Mattisse 02:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

SART, sustained attention to response
There is no explanation of this. In fact this article is the top result when searching for it.

Maybe someone could write what it is, or even better, write a seperate article on this.

193.140.194.136 (talk) 07:25, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Which "11" and "6"
I think going through the edit history (which isn't that extensive) and finding when "[e.g., 11]" and "[6]" were added manually can clarify which references were meant: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mind-wandering&diff=prev&oldid=502294794. Edhubbard (talk) 12:45, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Please, feel free to do it! Ah you did it! Great job!  Lova Falk     talk   13:54, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Mind Wandering -- Reading & Daily life edits
A really nice article. I think it presents information in a clear way, though in some areas explanations could be more concise and in others additional information and references could be added. The article covers a wide range of topics dealing with mind-wandering (MW) but I think more could be added such as how MW specifically affects reading comprehension and activities in daily life.

Below I have included my proposed changes and additional references I think would help the article.

I have copied and pasted the parts of the article I have suggestions on how to improve or have additional references and information to include.

Mind-wandering

Expanding the introduction:

Researchers define mind wandering (MW) as a situation where executive control shifts away from the primary goal to focus on secondary goals. MW most often occurs unintentionally and without the knowledge of the individual. The executive-resource theory states that both task related and task unrelated thoughts (TUT) compete for executive function resources. When the primary task is difficult, little resources are available for MW, whereas when the task is simple, the possibility for MW is abundant because it takes little executive control to focus on simple tasks.

Research methods[edit source | editbeta]

Jonathan Smallwood together with colleagues has popularized studying mind-wandering using thought sampling, or simply asking participants what they are thinking about at any given moment.[1][2]

Additional methodologies:

The experience sampling task is a method researchers have developed to assess mind wandering, in an experiment participants are given PDAs and asked to complete a questionnaire whenever the signal went off over the course of 7 days. The questionnaire questions vary but can include (a) whether or not their minds had wandered at the time the signal went off (b) what state of control they had over their thoughts and (c) about the content of their thoughts.

In other experiments, to assess MW, participants are asked to keep a diary of attention failures over 7 days.

Mind-wandering and working memory[edit source | editbeta]

One important question facing the study of mind-wandering is how it relates to working memory capacity.

Adding to introduction:

Executive-resource theory argues that working memory capacity (WMC) plays a major role in regulating thoughts; therefore WMC also affects in MW. Since WMC affects peoples’ everyday lives, it should be found that people with different WMCs experience different TUTs during daily life including tasks such as reading.

Generally, reports of task unrelated thought are less frequent when performing tasks that do not demand continuous use of working memory than when performing tasks which do.[13] Moreover, individual difference studies demonstrate that when tasks are non-demanding, high levels of working memory capacity are associated with more frequent reports of task unrelated thinking [26] especially when it is focused on the future.[27] By contrast, when performing tasks that demand continuous external attention, high levels of working memory capacity are associated with fewer reports of task unrelated thought.[7] Together these data are consistent with the claim that working memory capacity helps sustain a train of thought whether it is generated in response to a perceptual event or is self-generated by the individual themselves. Thus, at least under certain circumstances, the experience of mind-wandering is supported by working memory resources.[28]

Above statements can be simplified:

Researchers have found that in demanding tasks, participants with higher working memory capacities (WMC) were less likely to experience MW when compared to participants with lower WMC, while the opposite was true for simple tasks. They also found that the level of cognitive demand affected MW and not emotional or physical states such as increased boredom, or decreased happiness.

Addition of subheadings:

Cog 276 Mind-wandering plan
Mind wandering and reading comprehension:

Mind-wandering also affects reading depending on the level of difficulty of the reading and also on a persons WMC. Kane & McVay (2012) summarize that TUTs correlate with understanding text either because (a) MW causes impairment in reading, or (b) difficulty understanding the text can cause the mind to wander. Ultimately they found that MWC directly relates to reading comprehension levels where participants with lower WMC perform worse on comprehension-based tests.

They found that episodes of MW, especially early on in the text led to decreased identification of the villain and worse results on both factual and inferred questions. Researchers therefore concluded that when MW occurs during reading, the text is not processed with enough detail to provide for a comprehensive situation model. Furthermore both the timing and the frequency of MW help determine how much information is retained from the narrative.

MW had a negative affect on text comprehension in more difficult readings thereby confirming with the executive-resource hypothesis. However, the research also indicated that MW occurred more frequently in the harder than in the easier reading. To explain this inconsistency, researchers attributed the second conclusion to the situation model view that states that MW increases when readers have difficulty constructing a situation model.

--Paula Marques-Pinheiro (talk) 19:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC) Paula Marques-Pinheiro

I think this article does a good job of explaining mind wandering (MW) in a way that is understandable. While there are some sections that need to be expanded upon the over all article is nice. I think another section should also be added to the article connecting it to executive functions since a connection between the two has been proven. Below are my suggestions for the parts that I think should be fixed.

Introduction: I think that a little bit on how mind wandering (MW) is related to executive functions should be added. When it is said, "Mind-wandering is also intimately linked to states of affect; studies indicate that task-unrelated thought is common in states of low or depressed mood.[9][10] Mind-wandering is also common when drunk through the consumption of alcohol.[11]" a sentence should be put adding the information that mind wandering represents an executive control failure to maintain on-task thoughts due to the inhibition executive function failing to control attention and thoughts.

Research Methods: (Proposed Update on this Section) --KBPsych 02:57, 3 December 2013 (UTC)KBPsych Jonathan Smallwood and colleagues popularized mind-wandering using thought sampling or questionnaires. Mind-wandering is studied by finding lapses of external attention in participants. There are several methods to find lapses in attention. One is the SART task. In a SART task a there are two categories of words. One of the categories is the target words. In each block of the task a word will appear for a about 300 ms, there will be a pause and then another word. When a target word appears the participant hits a designated key. About 60% of the time after a target word a thought probe will appear to gauge whether thoughts were on task. If not there was at Task Unrelated Thought (TUTs) which signifies mind-wandering (McVay 2009; Reference 1). Another task to judge TUTs is the experience-sampling methodology (ESM). Participants carry around a personal digital assistant (PDA) that signals several times a day. At the signal a questionnaire is provided asking if thoughts were on task or wandering. Questions about context are also asked to measure the level of attention necessary for the task (Kate 2007). These methodologies are improvements on past methods that were inconclusive.

Mind Wandering and Executive Functions: I think this is a section that should be added to show that there is a relationship between the two. Mind wandering is characterized by TUTs, which can be executive function failures, such as inhibition, which is more common in people with a lower working memory capacity. Mind wandering represents an executive control failure to maintain on-task thoughts due to the inhibition executive function failing to control attention and thoughts. Controlling one’s attention, behavior, thoughts and emotions when conflicting responses, distractors or automatic responses are presented is the inhibition executive function. Updating executive function is the manipulation of information within the working memory by replacing outdated information with more relevant information. Since updating executive function takes place within the context of working memory, and low working memory capacity is an indicator of mind wandering, an low ability to preform the updating executive function can be an indicator of high mind wandering in a person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KBPsych (talk • contribs) 03:03, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

KBPsych (talk) 03:07, 28 October 2013 (UTC)KBPsych

Mind-Wandering and Working Memory Mind-wandering rates have been shown to vary with different levels of working memory capacity (ref. here). Working memory capacity has also been proven to be a good predictors of a public speakers’ perspective taking when delivering a speech (ref. here). It was discovered that low working memory capacity scoring individuals committed more errors than high scoring individuals on incongruent Stroop task (ref. here). Working memory and the Stroop effect are two phenomenon that cognitive psychologists have investigated individually, but recently research has been published relating the two.

JaviRob (talk) 01:40, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Mind-wandering and retention
It is well known that mind wandering affects retention where ultimately working memory capacity directly relates to reading comprehension levels where participants with lower WMC perform worse on comprehension-based tests (Kane & McVay 2012). When investigating how MW affects retention of important information and impairs the construction and updating a model of the story in a novel, experiments are conducted where participants are asked to answer a variety of questions about factual information, or indirect information while reading a detective novel. Throughout the reading, the author provides important cues to identify the villain, known as inference critical episodes (ICEs) that were later asked about. The researchers used questions to measure MW by asking participants if their attention was on or off task prior to being questioned. These questions were asked both randomly and before ICEs were reached. From this data, participants can be divided into groups based on whether or not MW occurred during ICEs. It was found that episodes of MW, especially early on in the text led to decreased identification of the villain and worse results on both factual and inferred questions. Therefore, when MW occurs during reading, the text is not processed with enough detail to provide for a comprehensive model of the story. Furthermore both the timing and the frequency of MW help determine how much information is retained from the narrative (Smallwood et al. 2008) (secondary source)

Mind-wandering and reading comprehension
Reading comprehension must also be investigated in terms of text difficulty. To assess this, researchers provide an easy and hard version of the same reading task where participants are interrupted and asked whether their thoughts at the time of interruption had been related or unrelated to the task at hand. What is found is that MW has a negative affect on text comprehension in more difficult readings thereby confirming with the executive-resource hypothesis where both task related and task unrelated thoughts (TUT) compete for executive function resources. Therefore, when the primary task is difficult, little resources are available for MW, whereas when the task is simple, the possibility for MW is abundant because it takes little executive control to focus on simple tasks However, MW tends to occurs more frequently in the harder than in the easier reading. Therefore it is possible that like retention, MW increases when readers have difficulty constructing a model of the story (Feng et al. 2013) (secondary source)

References for all examples
Paula Marques-Pinheiro (talk) 21:55, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I think that this article has a very good foundation. To make it better, I would like to see some sections be developed further. I would also like to see some of the different sections possibly arranged in a different order so that the whole article is more cohesive. There could also be adjustments to some of the wording to make it easier to read and understand for people who are unfamiliar with the subject. Savepandas16 (talk) 23:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC) Another concern of mine is that the sources might be a little outdated. To clarify my previous comment, I believe that it would be helpful to rearrange the sentences in the lead. After the very first sentence, driving is mentioned first. While this is a good thing to include in this article, I think it would be helpful to include an overall summary before giving specific examples. Savepandas16 (talk) 17:33, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

The overall status of this article is good, but not quite done. I like that it is understandable, but information is lacking in some areas. There are some areas of improvement. Elaboration on the studies conducted would be a great add-on. There is a lot of focus on individual differences and it focuses a lot on ADHD. That is the one big difference I'm seeing, not really any other. Elaborate more on other differences, or make ADHD another section. Some longer paragraphs would be easier to read along if they were split up. Are there more sources within the last 5 years that could be used? Perhaps information on neuroscience could be expanded as well. Or explain more about the pre-frontal cortex, as that is very important and others reading may need to understand how it is vital in mental processing and mind-wandering. --TiffanyShiffler (talk) 04:23, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Western Bias
The article has an especially heavy Western bias, with lines such as "The history of mind-wandering research dates back to 18th century England."

Mind Wandering is discussed in texts such as The Tripitaka, Mahayana Sutras and the Tibetan Book of the Dead which pre-date Western thought on the topic by approximately 2000 years. Yes, academic research was conducted in the 18th century by notable scholars, but their observations were simply those conducted with a late-arriving Western lens.

I would strongly suggest the article be corrected to reflect the long history of research concerning Mind Wandering conducted by Eastern Scholars. MrEarlGray (talk) 18:14, 5 October 2022 (UTC)