Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2012, Pages 1517-1525
Consciousness and Cognition

Short Communication
Mindwandering heightens the accessibility of negative relative to positive thought

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.05.013Get rights and content

Abstract

Mindwandering (MW) is associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Among the latter, negative mood and negative cognitions have been reported. However, the underlying mechanisms linking mindwandering to negative mood and cognition are still unclear. We hypothesized that MW could either directly enhance negative thinking or indirectly heighten the accessibility of negative thoughts. In an undergraduate sample (n = 79) we measured emotional thoughts during the Sustained Attention on Response Task (SART) which induces MW, and accessibility of negative cognitions by means of the Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) after the task. We also measured depressive symptoms and rumination. Results show that in individuals with elevated levels of depressive symptoms MW during SART predicts higher accessibility of negative thoughts after the task, rather than negative thinking during the task. These findings contribute to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of MW and provide insight into the relationship between task-involvement and affect.

Highlights

► Mindwandering (MW) is associated with negative mood and negative thinking. ► Being off-task may facilitate negative thinking either directly or indirectly. ► MW does not predict negative cognitions during a task. ► MW predicts the accessibility of negative cognitions after a task, but only in individuals with elevated depression.

Introduction

“The mind wanders, not just away from where we aim it, but also toward what we forbid it to explore”

     – Daniel M. Wegner (1997, p. 304)

A typical feature of the human mind is its tendency to spontaneously generate thoughts and to freely wander despite the external environment (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). With the exception of several early studies (e.g. Antrobus, 1968, Singer, 1966), this phenomenon has only recently been systematically investigated (see Gruberger et al., 2011, Smallwood and Schooler, 2006). Because of the elusive nature of the wandering mind, several terms for this construct have been used, such as “mindwandering” (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006), “stimulus independent thought” (Mason et al., 2007), “daydreaming” (Mar et al., 2012, Singer, 1966), and “task unrelated thought” (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Despite subtle conceptual differences (Christoff, 2012), a core characteristic is a state of decoupled attention when the mind wanders, where attention is detached from external toward internal processing (e.g. personal goals and current concerns) (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Here, we adopt the umbrella term of mindwandering (hereafter MW) to define this phenomenon.

MW is considered a ubiquitous phenomenon with high intra-individual stability across short and long time periods (Giambra, 1995, Kane et al., 2007). Recently, Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) showed, using an experience sampling approach, that MW occurs during almost every activity in everyday life. Moreover, Kane et al. (2007) estimated that we spend between 10% and 30% of our daily live experiencing MW. In light of such pervasive occurrence, it has been suggested that MW has several advantageous functions (Baars, 2010). For example, future planning is considered to be one of the most beneficial outcomes of MW (Schooler et al., 2011). Smallwood, Nind, and O’Connor (2009) reported that MW involved thinking about the future, rather than about the present or past. Moreover, such future-oriented thought is enhanced by self-reflection (Smallwood et al., 2011) and by priming of personal goals (Stawarczyk, Majerus, Maj, Van der Linden, & D’Argembeau, 2011), while it is reduced by negative mood (Smallwood & O’Connor, 2011). The clear advantage of MW here is to predict possible future events, to achieve better adaptation to the environment, and proactively reduce upcoming distress (Bar, 2009). In keeping with this, MW may also facilitate personally relevant problem solving by manipulating semantic information acquired during external processing (Binder et al., 1999). In other words, during MW it is possible to systemize information which could not be organized and analyzed during stimulus presentation. Finally, creativity (Sio & Ormerod, 2009) and coping (Greenwald & Harder, 1995) have also been linked to MW.

Nevertheless, MW comes also with several downsides which should be taken into account. First, according to the definition of a state of decoupled attention from external stimulation (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006), MW is consistently associated with impaired performance when one is required to accomplish a demanding task (Schooler et al., 2011). For instance, MW leads to reduced reading comprehension (Smallwood, McSpadden, Luus, & Schooler, 2008) and attentional failures (Christoff, Gordon, Smallwood, Smith, & Schooler, 2009). Interestingly, a recent ERP study demonstrated that during off-task periods both task-related information as well as novel distractors are elaborated to a lesser extent (Barron, Riby, Greer, & Smallwood, 2011). This supports the notion that during MW, attention is not drawn by external interfering stimuli but is actually turned inwards. Moreover, MW is often associated with reduced executive control (Schooler et al., 2011), reflecting either a phenomenon demanding executive resources (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006) or an executive failure (McVay & Kane, 2010). Second, MW is associated with detrimental effects on mood. A recent experience sampling study in 2250 healthy people showed that MW at initial sampling predicted lower mood at subsequent sampling (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). However, it is not clear whether this happened by reducing positive mood, enhancing negative mood, or both. In turn, negative mood induction heightens MW levels (Smallwood, Fitzgerald, Miles, & Phillips, 2009). The latter data suggest a reciprocal influence between MW and mood fluctuations. Third, some evidence supports a specific link between MW and depressive cognitions. In their seminal study, Golding and Singer (1983) reported that MW substantially explained variance in depressive attitudes, namely self-criticism, dependency, and inefficacy. In line with this, clinically and subclinically depressed samples show higher levels of MW (Smallwood et al., 2007, Watts et al., 1988). Fourth, at the level of individual differences, depressive symptoms as well as rumination are worth mentioning. Individual levels of depressive symptoms have been reported to be consistently associated with MW (Smallwood et al., 2003, Studies 2 and 3) and capable of predicting off-task thinking during a task (Smallwood, O’Connor, & Heim, 2006). Whereas, rumination, defined as “behaviors and thoughts that focus one’s attention on one’s depressive symptoms and on the implications of those symptoms” (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991, p. 569), has generally been reported not to predict MW (Smallwood et al., 2006, Smallwood et al., 2003). Although rumination has been associated theoretically with MW as another form of repetitive thinking (Watkins, 2008), rumination induction compared to distraction did not lead dysphorics to experience increased levels of MW (Lyubomirsky, Kasri, & Zehm, 2003).

So far no studies have explicitly investigated the link between MW and negative cognition. Indeed, most of the available data is correlational where it is difficult to make a directional inference. Interestingly, a specific link between MW and negative thinking can be proposed. As MW is associated with internally-oriented focus (Baird et al., 2011, Barron et al., 2011, Smallwood et al., 2011), it can heighten self-focus, which has been reliably associated with negative mood (Mor & Winquist, 2002). Moreover, a consistent line of research stressed that during spontaneous thought personal priorities and goals are actively processed (Giambra, 1995, Levinson et al., 2012, Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010), so that personal concerns may emerge and impact on thinking.

In keeping with this, MW can potentially have either direct or indirect effects on cognition that may explain its mood dampening effects. That is, it could be that when people’s minds wander they are inclined to think in a self-critical and negative way, with MW being directly associated with increased negative cognitions. Alternatively, MW can also have an indirect effect on negative cognitions through other cognitive mechanisms such as self-focused attention. In this case there would be an increased accessibility of negative cognitions, without an immediate detrimental effect on thinking. To our best knowledge, these after-effects on cognitions have never been investigated.

In the current experiment, MW, operationalized as “a shift of attention away from a primary task toward internal information” (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006, p. 946), was induced and measured using a slow-paced Go/NoGo paradigm, the Sustained Attention on Response Task (SART, Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997). The execution of the task was pseudo-randomly interleaved by thought probes to determine the presence of mindwandering (MW, from being completely on-task to completely off-task) and the valence of cognitions (from negative to positive) during the task, the latter allowing to test the direct effect of MW on cognition. Previous research has extensively shown that SART performance is related to attentional failures in everyday life (ecological validity; Smilek, Carriere, & Cheyne, 2010) and induces MW (Stawarczyk, Majerus, Maj, Van der Linden, & D’Argembeau, 2011). Alternatively to literature which conceptualizes MW as a categorical phenomenon (Christoff et al., 2009), we adopted a dimensional approach for two reasons. First, capitalizing on the variance at the level of each thought probe by using a Likert scale can provide substantially more information. Second, previous studies found that the neurobiological substrate of MW, namely the Default Mode Network (Gruberger et al., 2011), parametrically interferes with being completely engaged in a task rather than in an “all-or-none” fashion (i.e., Weissman, Roberts, Visscher, & Woldorff, 2006). Consistent with our new approach, recently Prado and Weissman (2011, pp.2281) claimed that: “[…] in addition to theorizing about discrete on- and off-task states (Christoff et al., 2009, Smallwood et al., 2008), it may be fruitful to conceptualize default-mode interference along a continuum”. For these reasons, we decide to adopt a continuous measure rather than a categorical approach.

To examine the indirect effect of MW, we examined the accessibility of negative thoughts using a Scrambled Sentences Task (SST, Van der Does, 2005, Wenzlaff and Bates, 1998) before and after MW. This task requires participants to unscramble sentences to form grammatically correct and meaningful statements using five of six displayed words. By reporting the unscrambled sentence that first comes to mind, every sentence is resolved in either a positive or negative manner. In depression-related research, this task has been used extensively and found to be sensitive to fluctuations in the accessibility of negative cognitions (Phillips et al., 2010, Wenzlaff and Bates, 1998). Unlike the standard paradigm, we did not tax participants’ executive resources by means of cognitive load (i.e. retaining a six digit number), because we expected that MW would impair mental resources necessary to regulate negative thinking (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Finally, depressive symptoms and ruminative thinking were both considered in the analysis in order to investigate the potential effect of individual differences in predicting negative cognitions.

Section snippets

Participants

Eighty undergraduates from Ghent University participated in this study for course credits. One case constituting an outlier (standardized residuals >3) was dropped, as recommended by Meyers, Gamst, and Guarino (2006), leaving 79 individuals (mean age = 20.3 years, SD = 2.6, 75.9% female). All participants signed informed consent. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee at Ghent University.

Questionnaires

Individual differences in subclinical depressive symptoms and thinking style were considered in this

Results

Descriptive statistics and means are provided in Table 1.

Discussion

Research has shown that we spend a great part of our mental life experiencing MW (Kane et al., 2007, Singer, 1966). Interestingly, higher levels of MW are associated with lower mood (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010) and negative thinking (Golding and Singer, 1983, Smallwood et al., 2007). We sought to examine the association between MW and negative cognitions, distinguishing between possible direct and indirect effects. To do so, we measured both negative cognitions during a MW-related paradigm

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Grant of the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University (BOF 10/2JO/061) awarded to Ernst Koster and a Grant BOF10/GOA/014 for a Concerted Research Action of Ghent University awarded to Rudi De Raedt and Ernst Koster.

The authors wish to thank Dr. J. Smallwood and Dr. N. Derakshan for their constructive comments on a previous version of the manuscript.

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