Smallwood Jonathan, Fishman Daniel J, Schooler Jonathan W
School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2007 Apr;14(2):230-6. doi: 10.3758/bf03194057.
Successful learning requires that individuals integrate information from the external environment with their own internal representations. In this article, we consider the role that mind wandering plays in education. Mind wandering represents a state of decoupled attention because, instead of processing information from the external environment, our attention is directed toward our own private thoughts and feelings. In principle, because mind wandering is a state of decoupled attention, it represents a fundamental breakdown in the individual's ability to attend (and therefore integrate) information from the external environment. We consider evidence that mind wandering impairs the encoding of information, leading to failures in building a propositional model of a sentence and, ultimately, impairing the building of a narrative model with sufficient detail to allow generating inferences. Next, because recognizing and correcting for mind wandering is a metacognitive skill, certain client groups, such as those suffering from dysphoria or attention deficit disorder, may be unable to correct for the deficits associated with mind wandering, and so may suffer greater negative consequences during education. Finally, we consider how to apply this research to educational settings.
成功的学习要求个体将来自外部环境的信息与他们自己的内部表征整合起来。在本文中，我们探讨了思维游荡在教育中所起的作用。思维游荡代表了一种注意力分散的状态，因为我们的注意力不是集中在处理来自外部环境的信息上，而是转向了我们自己的私密想法和感受。原则上，由于思维游荡是一种注意力分散的状态，它代表了个体接收（并因此整合）来自外部环境信息的能力出现了根本性的故障。我们考察了相关证据，这些证据表明思维游荡会损害信息编码，导致在构建句子命题模型时出现失误，并最终妨碍构建一个具有足够细节以便进行推理的叙事模型。其次，由于识别和纠正思维游荡是一种元认知技能，某些客户群体，比如患有烦躁不安或注意力缺陷障碍的人群，可能无法纠正与思维游荡相关的缺陷，因此在教育过程中可能会遭受更严重的负面后果。最后，我们思考如何将这项研究应用于教育环境。
