1 Department of Psychology, The University of York.
2 Department of Psychiatry, Aachen University.
Psychol Sci. 2018 Jan;29(1):56-71. doi: 10.1177/0956797617728727. Epub 2017 Nov 13.
The tendency for the mind to wander to concerns other than the task at hand is a fundamental feature of human cognition, yet the consequences of variations in its experiential content for psychological functioning are not well understood. Here, we adopted multivariate pattern analysis to simultaneously decompose experience-sampling data and neural functional-connectivity data, which revealed dimensions that simultaneously describe individual variation in self-reported experience and default-mode-network connectivity. We identified dimensions corresponding to traits of positive-habitual thoughts and spontaneous task-unrelated thoughts. These dimensions were uniquely related to aspects of cognition, such as executive control and the ability to generate information in a creative fashion, and independently distinguished well-being measures. These data provide the most convincing evidence to date for an ontological view of the mind-wandering state as encompassing a broad range of different experiences and show that this heterogeneity underlies mind wandering's complex relationship to psychological functioning.
思维从手头任务转移到其他关注点的趋势是人类认知的一个基本特征，但经验内容的变化对心理功能的影响还不是很清楚。在这里，我们采用多元模式分析同时分解经验采样数据和神经功能连接数据，揭示了同时描述个体自我报告经验和默认模式网络连接变化的维度。我们确定了与积极习惯性思维和自发与任务无关的思维的特质相对应的维度。这些维度与认知的各个方面（如执行控制和以创造性的方式生成信息的能力）具有独特的关系，并独立区分了幸福感的衡量标准。这些数据为心流状态的本体论观点提供了迄今为止最令人信服的证据，即它包含了广泛的不同体验，并且表明这种异质性是心流与心理功能之间复杂关系的基础。
