title: Back to the future: autobiographical planning and the functionality of mind-wandering.
abstract: Given that as much as half of human thought arises in a stimulus independent fashion, it would seem unlikely that such thoughts would play no functional role in our lives. However, evidence linking the mind-wandering state to performance decrement has led to the notion that mind-wandering primarily represents a form of cognitive failure. Based on previous work showing a prospective bias to mind-wandering, the current study explores the hypothesis that one potential function of spontaneous thought is to plan and anticipate personally relevant future goals, a process referred to as autobiographical planning. The results confirm that the content of mind-wandering is predominantly future-focused, demonstrate that individuals with high working memory capacity are more likely to engage in prospective mind-wandering, and show that prospective mind-wandering frequently involves autobiographical planning. Together this evidence suggests that mind-wandering can enable prospective cognitive operations that are likely to be useful to the individual as they navigate through their daily lives.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA. baird@psych.ucsb.edu
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Baird
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Smallwood
authors.forename: Jonathan W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Schooler
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005544:Forecasting; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D007206:Individuality; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013850:Thinking; D055815:Young Adult