Citation

Seli P, Carriere JSA, Wammes JD, Risko EF, Schacter DL, Smilek D. Psychol. Sci. 2018; 29(8): 1247-1256.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797618761039

PMID

29547349

Abstract

We examined the hypothesis that people can modulate their mind wandering on the basis of their expectations of upcoming challenges in a task. To this end, we developed a novel paradigm in which participants were presented with an analog clock, via a computer monitor, and asked to push a button every time the clock's hand was pointed at 12:00. Importantly, the time at which the clock's hand was pointed at 12:00 was completely predictable and occurred at 20-s intervals. During some of the 20-s intervals, we presented thought probes to index participants' rates of mind wandering.

RESULTS indicated that participants decreased their levels of mind wandering as they approached the predictable upcoming target. Critically, these results suggest that people can and do modulate their mind wandering in anticipation of changes in task demands.

Language: en

Keywords

cognitive control; mind wandering; modulation; open data; open materials; preregistered; task difficulty; task-unrelated thought