Nico Broers

Self-Reported Stickiness of Mind-Wandering Affects Task Performance.

When asked to perform a certain task, we typically spend a decent amount of time thinking thoughts unrelated to that task–a phenomenon referred to as “mind-wandering.” It is thought that this mind-wandering is driven at least in part by our unfinished goals and concerns. Previous studies have shown that just after presenting a participant with their own concerns, their reports of task-unrelated thinking increased somewhat. However, effects of these concerns on task performance were somewhat inconsistent. In this study we take the opposite approach, and examine whether task performance depends on the self-reported thought content. Specifically, a particularly intriguing aspect of mind-wandering that has hitherto received little attention is the difficulty of disengaging from it, in other words, the “stickiness” of the thoughts. While presenting participants with their own concerns was not associated with clear effects on task performance, we showed that the reports of off-task thinking and variability of response times increased with the amount of self-reported stickiness of thoughts. This suggests that the stickiness of mind-wandering is a relevant variable, and participants are able to meaningfully report on it.

Interference control theory : A new perspective on dual-task interference in memorizing and responding to visual targets

In a recent study, Nieuwenstein and Wyble (JEP:General, 2014) showed that the consolidation of a masked visual target can be disrupted for up to one second by a trailing 2-alternative forced choice task. Aside from demonstrating that working memory consolidation continues long after a mask, the results of Nieuwenstein and Wyble are remarkable in demonstrating retroactive interference (RI) with little to no proactive interference (PI) - the opposite of what is typically found in studies on the attentional blink and psychological refractory period effect. Here, we show that the reversal from PI to RI depends on the probability of T2 presence: When p(T2) is high, we find strong PI with little RI whereas we find strong RI with little PI when p(T2) is low. To explain these findings, we propose that the occurrence of PI and RI reflects the workings of an attentional control mechanism that aims to protect T1 consolidation against interference and that is applied in accordance with the risk of such interference. In this view, a high p(T2) entails a high risk of interference, and this results in the protection of T1 at the expense of a postponement of T2 processing. Conversely, a low p(T2) means a low risk of interference and this entails that T1 is left vulnerable, while T2 can be processed unabated. Consistent with this account, we show that if the risk of interference is increased by embedding the targets in an RSVP stream of distractors, the results again show strong PI with little RI even when p(T2) is low. Aside from offering a new perspective on dual-task interference, this work bears important implications for studies using RSVP, and it also offers an interesting account for why the ability to suppress attentional capture by distractors depends on the likelihood of encountering such distractors. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.