Thinking about your upcoming holiday when your boss is giving you instructions on a new project, thinking about the lecture you got from your boss when you are cooking dinner.
The average person spends up to one third of their life engaging in thoughts that are not related to the task at hand.
Two recent papers examine the perceptual and cognitive consequences of mind wandering.
In a study by Terhune and colleagues, participants were shown infrequent "Oddball" green circles embedded in a stream of "Standard" blue circles.
Participants had to judge whether each oddball was shorter or longer in duration than the standard stimuli and indicate whether they were on-task or off-task.
They found that when participants were mind wandering, they …show more content…
While this may be problematic during tasks that require precise timing with respect to the environment, like driving, perceiving time intervals as shorter could be beneficial when trying to pass the time during a boring, repetitive task, like folding laundry.
Terhune and colleagues studied mind wandering using standard experimental lab tasks that precisely measure the construct of interest but are not representative of real-world experiences.
Kane and colleagues tested the effects of mind wandering in an experimental situation designed to parallel a real-world context in which mind wandering is likely frequent: a university lecture.
University students watched a video lecture on statistics, during which they were periodically probed to report their thought content, which could either be on-task, lecture-related mind wandering, or off-task mind wandering.
Participants reported off-task mind wandering on roughly half the probes.
Not surprisingly, more off-task mind wandering was associated with lower performance on the post-test which tested material from the
The average person spends up to one third of their life engaging in thoughts that are not related to the task at hand.
Two recent papers examine the perceptual and cognitive consequences of mind wandering.
In a study by Terhune and colleagues, participants were shown infrequent "Oddball" green circles embedded in a stream of "Standard" blue circles.
Participants had to judge whether each oddball was shorter or longer in duration than the standard stimuli and indicate whether they were on-task or off-task.
They found that when participants were mind wandering, they …show more content…
While this may be problematic during tasks that require precise timing with respect to the environment, like driving, perceiving time intervals as shorter could be beneficial when trying to pass the time during a boring, repetitive task, like folding laundry.
Terhune and colleagues studied mind wandering using standard experimental lab tasks that precisely measure the construct of interest but are not representative of real-world experiences.
Kane and colleagues tested the effects of mind wandering in an experimental situation designed to parallel a real-world context in which mind wandering is likely frequent: a university lecture.
University students watched a video lecture on statistics, during which they were periodically probed to report their thought content, which could either be on-task, lecture-related mind wandering, or off-task mind wandering.
Participants reported off-task mind wandering on roughly half the probes.
Not surprisingly, more off-task mind wandering was associated with lower performance on the post-test which tested material from the