Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts-Lowell, 113 Wilder Street, Suite 300, Lowell, MA, 01854, USA.
Behav Res Methods. 2018 Apr;50(2):642-661. doi: 10.3758/s13428-017-0891-9.
In the past decade, a new field has formed to investigate the concept of mind-wandering, or task-unrelated thought. The state of mind-wandering is typically contrasted with being on-task, or paying attention to the task at hand, and is related to decrements in performance on cognitive tasks. The most widely used method for collecting mind-wandering data-the probe-caught method-involves stopping participants during a task and asking them where their attention is directed. In this review, 145 studies from 105 articles published between 2005 and 2015 were classified according to the framing and wording of the thought probe and response options. Five distinct methodologies were identified: neutral (in which counterbalancing was used to equally emphasize on-task and off-task states), dichotomous (say "yes" or "no" to one thought state), dichotomous (choose between two thought states), categorical, and scale. The review identifies at least 69 different methodological variants, catalogues the verbatim probes and response options used in each study, and suggests important considerations for future empirical work.
在过去的十年中，一个新的领域已经形成，以研究心流（或与任务无关的思维）的概念。心流状态通常与任务相关，或专注于手头的任务相对比，与认知任务表现的下降有关。收集心流数据最广泛使用的方法——探测捕捉法——涉及在任务期间停止参与者，并询问他们的注意力指向何处。在这篇综述中，根据思维探测和反应选项的框架和措辞，对 2005 年至 2015 年间发表的 105 篇文章中的 145 项研究进行了分类。确定了五种不同的方法：中性（使用平衡法同等强调任务和非任务状态）、二分法（对一种思维状态说是或否）、二分法（在两种思维状态之间进行选择）、类别和量表。综述至少确定了 69 种不同的方法变体，列出了每项研究中使用的详细探测和反应选项，并为未来的实证工作提出了重要的考虑因素。
