title: Motivating meta-awareness of mind wandering: A way to catch the mind in flight?
abstract: Given the negative effects of mind wandering on performance, it may be profitable to be aware of task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) as they occur. The present study investigated whether motivating people to catch TUTs increases meta-awareness. We offered incentives for increased self-catching during reading. To enhance the veracity of these self-reports, we used a "bogus-pipeline" procedure; we convinced participants that their mental states were being covertly monitored using physiological measures. In reality, mind wandering was assessed covertly by a secondary task ("gibberish detection"), and overtly by experience sampling. The results showed that incentives increased the number of self-catches without increasing overall mind wandering. Moreover, both the bogus pipeline and the opportunity for incentives increased the validity of self-reports, evidenced by significantly increased correlations between self-caught and behaviorally assessed mind wandering. We discuss the relevance of this methodological approach for research on mind wandering and research building on introspective reports more generally.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. Electronic address: claire.zedelius@psych.ucsb.edu.
authors.forename: Claire M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Zedelius
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors.forename: James M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Broadway
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Schooler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000067489:Metacognition / Q000502:physiology*; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D057566:Self Report; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Bogus pipeline; Introspection; Meta-awareness; Mind wandering; Motivation