Citation

Vannucci M, Pelagatti C, Marchetti I. Conscious. Cogn. 2017; 53: 61-69.

Affiliation

Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Ghent, Belgium.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.concog.2017.06.004

PMID

28645000

Abstract

Our understanding of mind wandering (MW) has dramatically increased over the past decade. A key challenge still facing research is the identification of the processes and events that directly cause and control its occurrence. In the present study we sought to shed light on this question, by investigating the effects of verbal cues on the frequency and temporal focus of MW. To this aim, we experimentally manipulated the presence of irrelevant verbal cues during a vigilance task, in two independent groups (Verbal-cues group vs. No-cues group). We found that compared to the No-cues group, the Verbal-cues group reported a higher amount of MW, mostly triggered by the irrelevant cue-words, and a higher proportion of past-oriented MW compared to the other temporal orientations. These results demonstrate that task-irrelevant verbal stimulation increases the frequency of MW and steers its temporal orientation toward the past. Implications for the research on MW are discussed.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Involuntary autobiographical memories; Mind wandering; Retrospective bias; Task-unrelated thoughts; Temporal orientation; Verbal cues