Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9104, 6500HE, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Psychol Res. 2022 Feb;86(1):284-293. doi: 10.1007/s00426-021-01483-9. Epub 2021 Feb 12.
Although mind wandering during reading is known to be affected by text difficulty, the nature of this relationship is not yet fully understood. To examine this issue, we conducted an experiment in which participants read non-fiction texts that varied along five levels of difficulty under naturalistic conditions. Difficulty levels were determined based on Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels and verified with Coh-Metrix indices. Mind wandering was measured with thought probes. We predicted that text difficulty and mind wandering have a U-shaped (i.e., quadratic) relationship. Contrary to our expectations, but in line with some prior studies, mind wandering linearly increased with text difficulty. Additionally, text interest moderated the effect of text difficulty on mind wandering. Finally, mind wandering was associated with worse performance on a comprehension test. Together, our findings extend previous work by showing that (a) a linear relationship between difficulty and mind wandering exists during common page-by-page reading of pre-existing texts and that (b) this relationship holds across a broad range of difficulty levels.
虽然阅读时的思维漫游已知会受到文本难度的影响，但这种关系的本质尚不完全清楚。为了研究这个问题，我们在自然条件下进行了一项实验，参与者阅读了五个难度级别不同的非小说类文本。难度级别是根据 Flesch-Kincaid 年级水平和 Coh-Metrix 指数确定的。思维漫游是通过思维探针来测量的。我们预测文本难度和思维漫游之间存在 U 型（即二次）关系。与我们的预期相反，但与一些先前的研究一致，思维漫游随着文本难度的线性增加而增加。此外，文本兴趣调节了文本难度对思维漫游的影响。最后，思维漫游与阅读理解测试的表现较差有关。总的来说，我们的发现扩展了先前的研究结果，表明（a）在阅读现有文本时，难度和思维漫游之间存在线性关系，以及（b）这种关系在广泛的难度级别范围内都成立。
