Shinagawa Kazushi, Ito Yuichi, Tsuji Koki, Tanaka Yuto, Odaka Mana, Shibata Midori, Terasawa Yuri, Umeda Satoshi
Department of Psychology, Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108-8345, Japan.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Kojimachi Business Center Building, 5-3-1 Kojimachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-0083, Japan.
Neuroimage Rep. 2021 Oct 14;1(4):100060. doi: 10.1016/j.ynirp.2021.100060. eCollection 2021 Dec.
A relationship between the awareness of mind-wandering (MW) and the disruption of MW because of external stimuli has previously been reported. Attention often fluctuates without external stimuli and such disruptions can spontaneously precede awareness of MW. To elucidate whether changes in attentional resources used by MW exist, we used event-related potentials (ERPs), focusing on the P300 (P3) ERP component as an index of attention to a task. Participants performed a simple task, in which they pressed a key in synchrony with continually presented tones. Moreover, they were asked to stop the response whenever they became aware of their MW. We analyzed the P3 induced by the tones before self-reports of MW using a state-space model that was used for analysis to detect changes over time. The results revealed that the mean amplitude of P3 increased significantly from the third to the second tone before the self-reports; no other clear increasing or decreasing tendencies were observed. We concluded that the attentional resources allocated to the main task returned, suggesting that such awareness requires a decrease in resources to task-unrelated thoughts. These findings highlight a transitional state related to awareness between the MW state and self-reports. Therefore, the state immediately before self-reports should not be defined as merely an MW state when using the self-caught method.
先前已有报道称，思维游荡（MW）的觉察与外部刺激导致的MW中断之间存在关联。在没有外部刺激的情况下，注意力也常常会波动，而且这种中断可能会在MW觉察之前自发出现。为了阐明MW所使用的注意力资源是否存在变化，我们使用了事件相关电位（ERP），重点关注P300（P3）ERP成分作为对任务注意力的指标。参与者执行一项简单任务，即与持续呈现的音调同步按键。此外，要求他们在意识到自己出现MW时停止反应。我们使用一种用于分析随时间变化的状态空间模型，分析了在自我报告MW之前由音调诱发的P3。结果显示，在自我报告之前，从第三个音调到第二个音调，P3的平均振幅显著增加；未观察到其他明显的增加或减少趋势。我们得出结论，分配给主要任务的注意力资源恢复了，这表明这种觉察需要减少分配给与任务无关思维的资源。这些发现突出了MW状态与自我报告之间与觉察相关的过渡状态。因此，在使用自我捕捉方法时，自我报告前的状态不应仅仅被定义为MW状态。
