Weber Mark, Cunningham Emily, Beck Diane M, Sadaghiani Sepideh, Wang Ranxiao Frances
Department of Psychology & Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 E. Daniel St, Champaign, IL, 61820, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2024 May;52(4):984-997. doi: 10.3758/s13421-023-01513-4. Epub 2024 Jan 18.
Mind wandering is a common occurrence that can have serious consequences, but estimating when mind wandering occurs is a challenging research question. Previous research has shown that during meditation, people may spontaneously alternate between task-oriented and mind-wandering states without awareness (Zukosky & Wang, 2021, Cognition, 212, Article 104689). However, under what conditions such alternations occur is not clear. The present study examined the effects of task type on spontaneous alternations between task focus and mind wandering. In addition to a meditation task, participants performed either a scene-categorization-based CPT or a visual detection task while attentional orientation was assessed via self-monitoring and intermittent probes. The three tasks differ in the extent of their reliance on continuous monitoring (less required in the detection than meditation and CPT tasks) and attentional orientation (oriented internally in meditation task and externally in CPT and detection tasks). To overcome prior methodological challenges, we applied a technique designed to detect spontaneous alternations between focused and mind-wandering states without awareness, based on how the proportion of "focused" responses/ratings to intermittent probes changes during a focus-to-mind-wandering interval (i.e., the period from one self-report of mind wandering to the subsequent self-report). Our results showed that the proportion of "focused" responses to intermittent probes remained constant with increasing interprobe interval during meditation (consistent with previous work), but declined significantly in the CPT and detection tasks. These findings support the hypothesis that spontaneous alternations of attentional states without self-awareness occur during tasks emphasizing internally but not externally oriented attention.
思绪游走是一种常见现象，可能会产生严重后果，但估计思绪何时游走是一个具有挑战性的研究问题。先前的研究表明，在冥想过程中，人们可能会在无觉知的情况下自发地在专注于任务的状态和思绪游走状态之间交替（祖科夫斯基和王，2021年，《认知》，第212卷，第104689篇文章）。然而，这种交替在何种条件下发生尚不清楚。本研究考察了任务类型对任务专注和思绪游走之间自发交替的影响。除了一项冥想任务外，参与者还进行了基于场景分类的连续性能测试（CPT）或视觉检测任务，同时通过自我监测和间歇性探测来评估注意力方向。这三项任务在对持续监测的依赖程度（检测任务比冥想和CPT任务所需的依赖程度低）和注意力方向（在冥想任务中注意力向内，在CPT和检测任务中注意力向外）方面存在差异。为了克服先前的方法学挑战，我们应用了一种技术，该技术旨在基于在从专注到思绪游走的间隔期间（即从一次思绪游走的自我报告到随后的自我报告的时间段）对间歇性探测的“专注”反应/评分比例的变化，来检测无觉知情况下专注状态和思绪游走状态之间的自发交替。我们的结果表明，在冥想过程中，随着探测间隔的增加，对间歇性探测的“专注”反应比例保持不变（与先前的研究一致），但在CPT和检测任务中显著下降。这些发现支持了这样一种假设，即在强调内向而非外向注意力的任务中会出现无自我觉知的注意力状态的自发交替。
