Benjamin W. Mooneyham

The costs and benefits of mind-wandering: a review.

Substantial evidence suggests that mind-wandering typically occurs at a significant cost to performance. Mind-wandering-related deficits in performance have been observed in many contexts, most notably reading, tests of sustained attention, and tests of aptitude. Mind-wandering has been shown to negatively impact reading comprehension and model building, impair the ability to withhold automatized responses, and disrupt performance on tests of working memory and intelligence. These empirically identified costs of mind-wandering have led to the suggestion that mind-wandering may represent a pure failure of cognitive control and thus pose little benefit. However, emerging evidence suggests that the role of mind-wandering is not entirely pernicious. Recent studies have shown that mind-wandering may play a crucial role in both autobiographical planning and creative problem solving, thus providing at least two possible adaptive functions of the phenomenon. This article reviews these observed costs and possible functions of mind-wandering and identifies important avenues of future inquiry.

The Middle Way: Finding the Balance between Mindfulness and Mind-Wandering

Abstract Mind-wandering is a common everyday experience in which attention becomes disengaged from the immediate external environment and focused on internal trains of thought. This chapter reviews progress in the study of mind-wandering and its manifold effects on cognition and affect. After summarizing key recent advances in the study of mind-wandering, we focus on three fundamentally practical questions: (1) What are the costs of mind-wandering for cognition and affect? (2) Is it possible to reduce mind-wandering with practices aimed at enhancing mindfulness? (3) What are some possible benefits of mind-wandering that may help to mitigate its costs? This chapter leads to the endorsement of a “middle way” approach to mind-wandering: though it may be useful to cultivate practices for overcoming some of mind-wanderings more disruptive consequences, we should not seek to eliminate it entirely, as it can offer some unique benefits when carried out at the appropriate times.

Thinking one thing, saying another: The behavioral correlates of mind-wandering while reading aloud

Although mind-wandering during silent reading is well documented, to date no research has investigated whether similar processes occur during reading aloud. In the present study, participants read a passage either silently or aloud while periodically being probed about mind-wandering. Although their comprehension accuracies were similar for both reading conditions, participants reported more mind-wandering while they were reading aloud. These episodes of mindless reading were associated with nearly normal prosody, but were nevertheless distinguished by subtle fluctuations in volume that were predictive of both overall comprehension accuracy and individual sentence comprehension. Together, these findings reveal that previously hidden within the common activity of reading aloud lies: (1) a demonstration of the remarkable automaticity of speech, (2) a situation that is surprisingly conducive to mind-wandering, (3) subtle vocal signatures of mind-wandering and comprehension accuracy, and (4) the promise of developing useful interventions to improve reading.

States of mind: Characterizing the neural bases of focus and mind-wandering through dynamic functional connectivity

During tasks that require continuous engagement, the mind alternates between mental states of focused attention and mind-wandering. Existing research has assessed the functional connectivity of intrinsic brain networks underlying the experience and training of these mental states using “static” approaches that assess connectivity across an entire task. To disentangle the different functional connectivity between brain regions that occur as the mind fluctuates between discrete brain states, we employed a dynamic functional connectivity approach that characterized brain activity using a sliding window. This approach identified distinct states of functional connectivity between regions of the executive control, salience, and default networks during a task requiring sustained attention to the sensations of breathing. The frequency of these distinct brain states demonstrated opposing correlations with dispositional mindfulness, suggesting a correspondence to the mental states of focused attention and mind-wandering. We then determined that an intervention emphasizing the cultivation of mindfulness increased the frequency of the state that had been associated with a greater propensity for focused attention, especially for those who improved most in dispositional mindfulness. These findings provide supporting evidence that mind-wandering involves the corecruitment of brain regions within the executive and default networks. More generally, this work illustrates how emerging neuroimaging methods may allow for the characterization of discrete brain states based on patterns of functional connectivity even when external indications of these states are difficult or impossible to measure.

Signal or noise: brain network interactions underlying the experience and training of mindfulness

A broad set of brain regions has been associated with the experience and training of mindfulness. Many of these regions lie within key intrinsic brain networks, including the executive control, salience, and default networks. In this paper, we review the existing literature on the cognitive neuroscience of mindfulness through the lens of network science. We describe the characteristics of the intrinsic brain networks implicated in mindfulness and summarize the relevant findings pertaining to changes in functional connectivity (FC) within and between these networks. Convergence across these findings suggests that mindfulness may be associated with increased FC between two regions within the default network: the posterior cingulate cortex and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Additionally, extensive meditation experience may be associated with increased FC between the insula and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, little consensus has emerged within the existing literature owing to the diversity of operational definitions of mindfulness, neuroimaging methods, and network characterizations. We describe several challenges to develop a coherent cognitive neuroscience of mindfulness and to provide detailed recommendations for future research.

Pushing the Limits: Cognitive, Affective, and Neural Plasticity Revealed by an Intensive Multifaceted Intervention

Scientific understanding of how much the adult brain can be shaped by experience requires examination of how multiple influences combine to elicit cognitive, affective, and neural plasticity. Using an intensive multifaceted intervention, we discovered that substantial and enduring improvements can occur in parallel across multiple cognitive and neuroimaging measures in healthy young adults. The intervention elicited substantial improvements in physical health, working memory, standardized test performance, mood, self-esteem, self-efficacy, mindfulness, and life satisfaction. Improvements in mindfulness were associated with increased degree centrality of the insula, greater functional connectivity between insula and somatosensory cortex, and reduced functional connectivity between posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and somatosensory cortex. Improvements in working memory and reading comprehension were associated with increased degree centrality of a region within the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) that was extensively and predominately integrated with the executive control network. The scope and magnitude of the observed improvements represent the most extensive demonstration to date of the considerable human capacity for change. These findings point to higher limits for rapid and concurrent cognitive, affective, and neural plasticity than is widely assumed.

Mind wandering minimizes mind numbing: Reducing semantic-satiation effects through absorptive lapses of attention.

Mind wandering is associated with perceptual decoupling: the disengagement of attention from perception. This decoupling is deleterious to performance in many situations; however, we sought to determine whether it might occur in the service of performance in certain circumstances. In two studies, we examined the role of mind wandering in a test of “semantic satiation,” a phenomenon in which the repeated presentation of a word reduces semantic priming for a subsequently presented semantic associate. We posited that the attentional and perceptual decoupling associated with mind wandering would reduce the amount of satiation in the semantic representations of repeatedly presented words, thus leading to a reduced semantic-satiation effect. Our results supported this hypothesis: Self-reported mind-wandering episodes (Study 1) and behavioral indices of decoupled attention (Study 2) were both predictive of maintained semantic priming in situations predicted to induce semantic satiation. Additionally, our results suggest that moderate inattention to repetitive stimuli is not sufficient to enable “dishabituation”: the refreshment of cognitive performance that results from diverting attention away from the task at hand. Rather, full decoupling is necessary to reap the benefits of mind wandering and to minimize mind numbing.

Insights from Quiet Minds: The Converging Fields of Mindfulness and Mind-Wandering

Our lives are filled with an endless array of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, and our attention usually darts back and forth between them. Yet meditative traditions have long valued the capacity to remain undistracted from our immediate experience, and countless individuals make a practice of stabilizing their awareness in the here and now. What are the implications of anchoring our usually restless minds? Could stabilizing our attention provide an informative lens into the dynamics of the human brain? Here we review recent research that situates mindfulness as an opposing construct to mind-wandering and a remedy for wandering minds. We then review empirical intersections between mindfulness and mind-wandering from recent neuroimaging studies.

Stimulating minds to wander

Springing from memory and imagination, mind wandering is a mental state occupying as much as half of our waking life, involving a shift of attention away from the external environment and toward task-unrelated concerns (1). Although mind wandering may play an important role in planning and creativity (2, 3), it is also widely associated with negative mood and degraded performance on measures of vigilance, working memory, fluid intelligence, and reading comprehension (4, 5). The intrinsically subjective and spontaneous nature of mind wandering has made it difficult to investigate with direct experimental manipulations (6). Researchers have used various approaches to do so indirectly, by altering related factors such as mood, motivation, the amount of time spent on a task, or cognitive load (7, 8). However, these factors may influence various cognitive processes besides mind wandering. Moreover, these approaches do not directly implicate underlying neural mechanisms of mind wandering. In contrast, Axelrod et al. (9) demonstrate that mind wandering can be increased by direct experimental manipulation of brain activity using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The article by Axelrod et al. thus marks a new era for research into mind wandering and previews some of the insights that continued methodological advances will likely make possible.

Modernizing Science: Comments on Nosek and Bar-Anan (2012)

Technology and science have long been the reciprocal beneficiaries of one another. Science advances technology and in turn technology advances science. The benefits of science for technology are clearly evident in the introduction of the Internet, which would not exist were it not for the scientific advances underpinning it. In turn, science has been the beneficiary of the many affordances of the Internet. E-mail has greatly enhanced scientists’ capacity for communication with one another. Web pages and open access journals have increased the accessibility of scientific publications. Search engines have facilitated scientists’ ability to identify research relevant to their interests. Data collection sites (e.g., Mechanical Turk) have provided unprecedented access to human participants. Furthermore, sites for the logging of experimental designs and results (e.g., clinicaltrials.gov) have begun to increase the transparency of the scientific process. However, although science has begun to realize the potential affordances of the Internet, it has not realized the full potential for advancement that the Internet allows. Brian A. Nosek and Yoav Bar-Anan’s (this issue) discussion of a scientific utopia provides one possible vision for the more radical advances to the dissemination of science that the Internet might allow. In their vision, which they see as gradually unfolding in a series of six steps, scientific journals themselves would be replaced with an Internet-based system of evaluation and distribution of scientific research. The commendable goal of their vision is to enable research findings to become more rapidly and broadly disseminated; to increase the fairness and transparency of the review process; and to enable the continual updating and improvement of published methodologies, analyses, and results. Although we commend Nosek and Bar-Anan’s efforts to conceive of ways in which the affordances of the Internet can enable science to abandon its archaic vestiges of increasingly obsolete technologies, we also note that one person’s utopia may be another’s dystopia; the “new reality” described by Nosek and Bar-Anan may seem simple and streamlined to some, yet appear dauntingly complicated and burdensome to others (indeed, this is a difference of opinion that the authors of this reply have experienced firsthand). Therefore, although we applaud Nosek and Bar-Anan for their thorough explication of what they believe to be the necessary changes for our field, we believe that formulating the best solutions to the shortcomings of science in general and psychology in particular requires collective deliberation regarding the many alternative approaches that might be taken. In this spirit of open discussion, we suggest some alternative ways of taking advantage of the Internet to improve many aspects of the scientific process without necessarily requiring a broad overhaul of the scientific system as it currently stands. What, then, are the shortcomings of the current system, and how can they be overcome? We believe that there are several aspects of the current process of conducting and disseminating science that are in need of improvement. These shortcomings (several of which are interrelated) include large lag times for publication, nontransparency (of both the review process and the representation of reported hypotheses/methods/ analyses/results), the irreproducibility of experimental results, and the lack of access to unpublished (and/or statistically nonsignificant) research. The current system of publishing scientific information relies first and foremost on peer-reviewed journals; these journals limit the extent of information dissemination by producing large delays between the submission of an article for publication and its actual appearance in print, imposing page limits that are unnecessary in the digital age of the Internet, and exerting a bias against publishing null results. Moreover, the pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals is so great that researchers may feel forced to massage their results in such ways as to make them appear most significant and impactful, often at the cost of the transparency with which they detail their hypotheses, methods, and analyses (John, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2012; Simons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2011). This further complicates any attempts at replication, as key details are often omitted and points of theoretical or analytical conflict are often assuaged in the process of presenting results for publication. Even presenting a research finding in the best possible light does not necessarily mean that it will be more likely to be published by a given journal, however, as the decision rests in the hand of the reviewers, who often disagree with each other and who also