Tracking the train of thought from the laboratory into everyday life: an experience-sampling study of mind wandering across controlled and ecological contexts.
In an experience-sampling study that bridged laboratory, ecological, and individual-differences approaches to mind-wandering research, 72 subjects completed an executive-control task with periodic thought probes (reported by McVay & Kane, 2009) and then carried PDAs for a week that signaled them eight times daily to report immediately whether their thoughts were off task. Subjects who reported more mind wandering during the laboratory task endorsed more mind-wandering experiences during everyday life (and were more likely to report worries as off-task thought content). We also conceptually replicated laboratory findings that mind wandering predicts task performance: Subjects rated their daily-life performance to be impaired when they reported off-task thoughts, with greatest impairment when subjects' mind wandering lacked metaconsciousness. The propensity to mind wander appears to be a stable cognitive characteristic and seems to predict performance difficulties in daily life, just as it does in the laboratory.
McVay
Jennifer C
JC
Psychology Department, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina 27402-6170, USA.
Kane
Michael J
MJ
Kwapil
Thomas R
TR
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D003243:Consciousness; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013850:Thinking; D055815:Young Adult