Head James, Helton William S
U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, RDRL-HRS-E, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, 21005, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8040, New Zealand.
Exp Brain Res. 2018 Sep;236(9):2463-2467. doi: 10.1007/s00221-016-4623-7. Epub 2016 Mar 25.
Researchers suggest links between mind-wandering and impaired processing of external task stimuli: mind-wandering results in perceptual decoupling. The primary methodology employed to investigate the effects of mind-wandering requires people to report their conscious state and then predicts prior behavior or neurophysiological responses using the person's self-report. Unfortunately, this method employs reports that occur after the behavior occurs. An alternative methodology employs a word displayed prior to a performance check or catch trial. After the catch trial, participants then report their awareness of the word occurring, attempt to recognize the word, and also report whether they were on- or off-task. We show that participants' explicit and implicit awareness of the pre-catch trial word is independent of self-reports of conscious state. This finding conflicts with the perspective that mind-wandering reports indicate perceptual decoupling. Reports of mind-wandering may alternatively be how people explain behavioral outcomes.
思绪游荡会导致感知解耦。用于研究思绪游荡影响的主要方法要求人们报告自己的意识状态，然后根据个人的自我报告预测先前的行为或神经生理反应。不幸的是，这种方法采用的是行为发生后的报告。另一种方法是在绩效检查或捕捉试验之前显示一个单词。在捕捉试验之后，参与者报告他们对出现的单词的意识，尝试识别该单词，并报告他们当时是否在执行任务。我们表明，参与者对捕捉试验前单词的显性和隐性意识与意识状态的自我报告无关。这一发现与思绪游荡报告表明感知解耦的观点相冲突。思绪游荡的报告可能是人们对行为结果的解释方式。
