Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, USA.
Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, USA.
Conscious Cogn. 2022 Aug;103:103355. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103355. Epub 2022 Jun 18.
Mind wandering is a topic of great interest in many areas, but as with all psychological constructs, the interpretation of experimental results might depend on the way it is measured. A common way of measuring mind wandering in experiments is with self-report thought probes. An important question with this methodology is if the probe itself may be influencing participants' mind wandering. Previous research suggests that multiple thought probes throughout a task may lead to less mind wandering. However, in some studies (e.g., Schubert et al, 2019) the probes occurred during a recorded lecture video and in the others (e.g., Seli et al, 2016) the probes occurred during a sustained attention to response task (SART). What is missing in the current literature is a comparison of the effect the number of thought probes has on mind wandering during a task that requires a greater deal of thought control throughout the task to perform well, such as a complex span task or working memory. As such, in the two experiments presented here we randomly assigned participants to one of four conditions. Conditions contained a minimum of one and a maximum of six probes. In the first experiment, we found that participants who had received fewer probes mind wandered less during an operation span task, supporting our hypothesis. In the second experiment, we found that participants who had received fewer probes mind wandered more during a video lecture. The results suggest that thought probes interact with attentional control demands to influence mind wandering.
思维漫游是许多领域都非常感兴趣的话题，但与所有心理结构一样，实验结果的解释可能取决于测量的方式。一种常见的在实验中测量思维漫游的方法是使用自我报告的思维探测。这种方法的一个重要问题是，探测本身是否会影响参与者的思维漫游。先前的研究表明，在任务中多次使用思维探测可能会导致更少的思维漫游。然而，在一些研究中（例如，Schubert 等人，2019 年），探测发生在记录的讲座视频中，而在其他研究中（例如，Seli 等人，2016 年），探测发生在持续注意力反应任务（SART）中。目前文献中缺少的是在需要在整个任务中进行更多思维控制才能表现良好的任务（例如复杂跨度任务或工作记忆）中，比较思维探测次数对思维漫游的影响的比较。因此，在本文提出的两项实验中，我们随机将参与者分配到四个条件之一。每个条件至少包含一个探测，最多包含六个探测。在第一个实验中，我们发现接受较少探测的参与者在操作跨度任务中思维漫游较少，这支持了我们的假设。在第二个实验中，我们发现接受较少探测的参与者在视频讲座中思维漫游更多。结果表明，思维探测与注意力控制需求相互作用，影响思维漫游。
