Xu Judy, Metcalfe Janet
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, 406 Schermerhorn Hall, 1190 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY, 10027, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2016 Jul;44(5):681-95. doi: 10.3758/s13421-016-0589-8.
Insofar as mind wandering has been linked to poor learning, finding ways to reduce the propensity to mind wander should have implications for improving learning. We investigated the possibility that studying materials at an appropriate level of difficulty with respect to the individual's capabilities-that is, studying in the region of proximal learning (RPL)-might reduce mind wandering. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were probed for their attentional state while they studied blocks of English-Spanish word pairs that were (a) easy, (b) in the RPL, or (c) difficult. We found that studying materials in the RPL was associated with reduced mind wandering. Test performance on items studied while mind wandering was also poorer. In Experiment 3, we investigated the relation between differences in participants' mastery and mind wandering. We found that high performers mind wandered more when studying the easier word pairs, whereas low performers mind wandered more when studying the difficult items. These results indicate that the RPL is specific to the individual's level of mastery and that mind wandering occurs when people are outside that region.
鉴于思维游走与学习效果不佳有关，找到减少思维游走倾向的方法应该对提高学习有帮助。我们研究了一种可能性，即针对个人能力以适当难度水平学习材料——也就是说，在近端学习区域（RPL）学习——可能会减少思维游走。在实验1和实验2中，参与者在学习英语-西班牙语单词对组块时，被探测其注意力状态，这些组块分别是（a）简单的、（b）处于RPL的或（c）困难的。我们发现，在RPL中学习材料与思维游走减少有关。在思维游走时学习的项目的测试成绩也较差。在实验3中，我们研究了参与者掌握程度差异与思维游走之间的关系。我们发现，表现优秀者在学习较简单的单词对时思维游走更多，而表现较差者在学习困难项目时思维游走更多。这些结果表明，RPL是特定于个人掌握水平的，并且当人们处于该区域之外时就会发生思维游走。
