Troubling Inconsistencies in the Mind-Wandering Literature: A Comparison of the Impacts of Reporting Techniques and Types of Mind-Wandering in Driving and N-back Tasks
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many individuals have had the experience of “coming to” in the middle of a task and realizing that they aren’t paying attention. This shift in attention away from a primary task is known as mind-wandering. There has been an increasing amount of research on mind-wandering, but results are inconsistent. In this thesis, we investigate two sources of inconsistency: differences in the way mind-wandering is measured (thought-probes, post-task reports), and differences in the type of mind-wandering experienced (intentional, unintentional) under different task conditions. Because there is a danger that mind-wandering may also vary depending on the task, we investigated these issues in two primary tasks: a simulated driving task, and the N-back task (a working memory task used in studies of mind-wandering). In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated how mind-wandering was measured (thought-probes, post-task reports) and examined effects on rates of mind-wandering changes in task performance, finding that measurement type had an effect on both. Although post-task reports may be less sensitive and capture less mind-wandering, thought-probes interrupt the flow of the task, changing performance and influencing the way mind-wandering varies with time on task. This suggest that some discrepancies emerge because the two report types do not measure the same thing and can affect how other variables influence performance. Our second line of research investigated the prevalence of intentional versus unintentional mind-wandering (assessed by thought-probes), as it as it varies by task difficulty (Experiment 3: driving, Experiment 4: N-back task). Here we found that unintentional mind-wandering was more prevalent than intentional and more detrimental to primary task performance—especially when the task was difficult. Across all experiments, we also monitored the relationship between mind-wandering and differences in working memory (measured by the Operation Span) and sustained attention (measured by the Sustained Attention to Response Task), finding that effects varied across studies. Overall, this research challenges the assumption that mind-wandering is the same regardless of context (primary task), suggesting that researchers should be cautions in generalizing across primary tasks when studying mind-wandering. These findings have ramifications for theory and methodology in the mind-wandering literature, as well as implications for driver safety.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.155 | 0.512 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".