Our minds wander-it's an unavoidable truth. Studying how and why we enter these periods of unintended thought is therefore crucial to understand how our minds function. Giambra (1995) found that the propensity of task-unrelated images and thoughts (TUITs) is a reliable measure over a variety of vigilance tasks. In these studies he used a probe-TUIT method to measure TUIT propensity, which was found to be both sensitive to conditions of a concurrent task and also able to maintain individual differences over different tasks and task conditions, as well as over short and long time-intervals.
Consistent with past vigilance
research, Giambra found that target response time was faster for the condition with a larger
percentage of target stimuli. However, the reported interaction between response
time and event rate was atypical, with response time progressively increasing as event rate
increased. This finding contradicts past literature, in
which it has been found that an event rate of 15/min has a faster response time than that of 30/min. In order to account
for both findings, Giambra suggests that the relationship between target
response time and event rate may be u-shaped (see graph below for a rough
depiction). This explanation definitely
raises some flags as this u-shaped curve is unsupported by past
research and seems to be a forced way to make both results fit together. However, there was also no association found between response
time and P-TUIT frequency, so it remains unclear what caused these unique
results.
The work of Reichle, Reineberg, &
Schooler (2010) examines
readers’ eye-movements in normal reading, mindless reading, and during
meta-awareness, in order to assess the degree that cognition influences eye movements
during normal reading. Just as Giambra used the probe- method to measure TUIT
frequency, here a probe-caught mind wandering method is used to measure eye
movements when participants are in the middle of mind-wandering (i.e. they have not entered meta-awareness, which occurs when mind
wandering is self-caught). Results indicate that longer text fixations are indicative of mindless reading and that the mind
wanders for a considerably long time before self-caught (2-4 minutes), during
which eye movements become increasingly decoupled from text processing. This study provides evidence for the use of
tracking eye movements as on-line indicators of mind wandering. However, it is important to note the small
sample size, 75% of which was female (3 females and 1 male).
By comparing this difference between male and
female subjects, researchers concluded that the predicted payoff effect was
exclusively and strongly characteristic of male subjects. They suggested that this difference might indicate
that the reward of mastering the task and performing well for these
“high-achieving college girls” was more important than the monetary payoff. Studies,
such as that of Vallerand & Bissonnette (1992),
have found that compared to males, females tend to be more intrinsically
motivated, less externally regulated, and display higher levels of behavioral
persistence. Even further, this is not specific to “high-achieving college girls,” as this gender difference has
been found as early as kindergarten. These
findings therefore support the proposed explanation provided by Antrobus et al. when
trying to account for the reported gender effect. However, in order to measure this more accurately, researchers should have used a self-report measure to assess the
importance each participant placed on monetary value and task performance.
Further, when analyzing the
probability of missing a signal (P(Miss)) as a function of penalty, increasing
penalty was associated with a decrease in TUITs (P(Report)), which resulted in the predicted decrease in P(Miss) for the male subjects. A point that the authors should have
addressed was the lack of gender effect in the interaction of P(Miss) and
penalty (see Figure 3). Given the significant gender effect in the interaction of P(Report) and penalty
(Figure 2), would mean that, for these female subjects, P(Miss) was not
inversely related to P(Report). This
suggests that the same cognitive resources were actually not being used for
both TUIT and signal detection for these females. Whether this is a result of
the undemanding task or the weak relation between payoff and detection
accuracy, it highlights the impact that gender may play in mind
wandering research.
In a study by Teasdale
et al. (1995) task practice reduced
the extent that task performance interfered with TUIT frequency. Supporting past research that TUIT production
and task performance both demand central resources of control and coordination,
this finding suggests that practice reduces the resources demanded for the
task, thus increasing resource availability for TUIT production. However, it is
important to note that only female subjects were tested in these studies. After
observing the gender effect in the study by Antrobus et al., I
would refrain from generalizing Teasdale’s findings to male subjects. This previously observed gender effect suggests
the possibility that task practice might only mediate the central resource
demands of females, as a result of their higher levels of intrinsic motivation, which may increase their likelihood to learn from practice and perform well on a task, compared to males.
So far in this post, research has focused on the negative effects of TUITs, however, a subsequent experiment by Antrobus et al. addresses the
importance of cognitive spontaneous thought, especially when incompatible
with one’s existing conception of his/her projected environment. A significant effect of pretask condition
on TUIT frequency during a subsequent task was found, such that subjects
exposed to a radio broadcast announcing that the US had declared war reported a
significant increase in TUITs compared to the control group.
Based on these findings, when conducting
his study, Giambra acknowledged that prior events could influence subsequent TUIT
frequency, and therefore manipulated whether participants played an
uninteresting video game (control condition) or solved a mental puzzle (experimental condition), with the
puzzle expected to produce more TUITs, as subjects would still be thinking
about it during the relatively boring subsequent vigilance task. However, I do
not believe that Giambra’s pretask conditions were comparable to those of Antrobus
et al. While Giambra’s mental puzzle condition might engage and frustrate
subjects, I would expect emotions evoked from the broadcast in Antrobus’
experiment to be much stronger with more of a lasting impression, as it presented life-changing news with serious implications directly affecting the subjects. In addition, to me, the “condition group” of
the video game sounded just as frustrating as the puzzle (if not more so) as it
provided no instructions, made no logical sense, and therefore could have made
subjects upset and frustrated after realizing they lacked any control in the
outcome, which could have equally carried over as much distraction as the thoughts
from the puzzle pretask condition. The
fact that thoughts reported by the experimental condition in the study by
Antrobus et al. were related to the war and its potential effects on the subjects' lives,
suggests an increase in payoff for this planful spontaneous thinking. This is an interesting extension from
Antrobus’ previous experiment (mentioned earlier) which had involved a monetary penalty for wrong detection. While in the previous experiment the payoff was within the task itself, in this later study the payoff actually came from the production of TUITs related to information provided in the broadcast.
No comments:
Post a Comment