scholarly journals Conducting the train of thought: Working memory capacity, goal neglect, and mind wandering in an executive-control task.

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer C. McVay ◽  
Michael J. Kane
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Control Task ◽  
Goal Neglect ◽  
Train Of Thought

scholarly journals For Whom the Mind Wanders, and When, Varies Across Laboratory and Daily-Life Settings

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 1271-1289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Kane ◽  
Georgina M. Gross ◽  
Charlotte A. Chun ◽  
Bridget A. Smeekens ◽  
Matt E. Meier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Laboratory Findings ◽  
The Mind

Undergraduates ( N = 274) participated in a weeklong daily-life experience-sampling study of mind wandering after being assessed in the lab for executive-control abilities (working memory capacity; attention-restraint ability; attention-constraint ability; and propensity for task-unrelated thoughts, or TUTs) and personality traits. Eight times a day, electronic devices prompted subjects to report on their current thoughts and context. Working memory capacity and attention abilities predicted subjects’ TUT rates in the lab, but predicted the frequency of daily-life mind wandering only as a function of subjects’ momentary attempts to concentrate. This pattern replicates prior daily-life findings but conflicts with laboratory findings. Results for personality factors also revealed different associations in the lab and daily life: Only neuroticism predicted TUT rate in the lab, but only openness predicted mind-wandering rate in daily life (both predicted the content of daily-life mind wandering). Cognitive and personality factors also predicted dimensions of everyday thought other than mind wandering, such as subjective judgments of controllability of thought. Mind wandering in people’s daily environments and TUTs during controlled and artificial laboratory tasks have different correlates (and perhaps causes). Thus, mind-wandering theories based solely on lab phenomena may be incomplete.

scholarly journals Examining the Relations among Working Memory Capacity, ADHD Symptology and Conscious Experience

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Beikmohamadi
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Adhd Symptoms ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Children With Adhd

An operational definition of mind wandering is when one has thoughts unrelated to the current task(s) (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015). Mind blanking can be thought of as a subtype of mind wandering where there is an inability to report the content of these task-unrelated thoughts. Van den Driessche et al. (2017) found that children and young adults with more Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms report more mind blanking than those with fewer ADHD symptoms and that non-medicated children with ADHD reported less mind wandering and more mind blanking than medicated children with ADHD. Van den Driessche et al. speculated that medication facilitated executive control and that executive resources support mind wandering (and on-task thought). These findings also bear on the theoretical debate on the role of executive functions in conscious experience. Some argue that executive functions support mind wandering (Levinson et al., 2012; Smallwood, 2010), while others argue and that mind wandering situationally results from a lack (or failure) of executive control (McVay & Kane, 2010; Meier, 2019). In this study, with a young adult sample, I tested the association between ADHD symptomology and conscious experience and if executive resources moderate the proportion of reporting mind blanking and mind wandering. The current study found evidence for Van den Driessche et al.’s finding of a positive and significant association between mind blanking and ADHD symptomology. The current study was also broadly consistent with Van den Driessche et al.’s finding of an ADHD-related trade-off involving mind blanking, but importantly differs from Van den Driessche et al. in that mind wandering was not involved in this trade-off. The current study did not find an association between working memory capacity and mind wandering. Thus, I found no evidence for executive resources supporting mind wandering, consistent with previous studies (McVay & Kane, 2009, 2012a, 2012b; Meier, 2019; Robison & Unsworth, 2018; Unsworth & McMillan, 2013, 2014).

An Individual Differences Investigation of the Relations Among Life Event Stress, Working Memory Capacity, and Mind Wandering: A Replication-Extension Study

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haley Goller ◽  
Jonathan Britten Banks ◽  
Matt Ethan Meier
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Extension Study ◽  
Negative Life Event ◽  
Life Event ◽  
Life Event Stress ◽  
Event Stress

Klein and Boals (2001, Experiments 1 and 2) found that working memory capacity correlated negatively with perceived negative life event stress and speculated the relation may be driven by thoughts produced from these experiences. Here, we sought to replicate the association between working memory capacity and perceived negative life experience and to assess potential mediators of this association such as mind wandering propensity, rumination propensity, and the sum of negatively-valenced mind wandering reports. In this preregistered replication and extension study, with data collected from three hundred and fifty-six subjects (ns differ among analyses), we found no evidence suggesting that perceived negative life stress is associated with working memory capacity. Additionally, we found evidence consistent with the claim that negatively-valenced mind wandering is uniquely detrimental to cognitive task performance, but we highlight a potential confound that may account for this association that should be addressed in future work.

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