Dimensions of Experience: Exploring the Heterogeneity of the Wandering Mind

The tendency for the mind to wander to concerns other than the task at hand is a fundamental feature of human cognition, yet the consequences of variations in its experiential content for psychological functioning are not well understood. Here, we adopted multivariate pattern analysis to simultaneou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPsychological science Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 56 - 71
Main Authors Wang, Hao-Ting, Poerio, Giulia, Murphy, Charlotte, Bzdok, Danilo, Jefferies, Elizabeth, Smallwood, Jonathan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.01.2018
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Association for Psychological Science
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Attention - physiology
Behavior Rating Scale
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Brain research
Cognition
Cognitive science
Executive control
Executive Function - physiology
Female
Humans
Individual differences
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Multivariate Analysis
Pattern analysis
Psychological functioning
Psychology
Rest - physiology
Sampling
Surveys and Questionnaires
Thinking - physiology
Wandering
Young Adult
open materials
mind wandering
default mode network
content regulation
ontology of spontaneous thought
Default mode network
Content regulation
Mind-wandering
Ontology of spontaneous thought
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Summary:The tendency for the mind to wander to concerns other than the task at hand is a fundamental feature of human cognition, yet the consequences of variations in its experiential content for psychological functioning are not well understood. Here, we adopted multivariate pattern analysis to simultaneously decompose experience-sampling data and neural functional-connectivity data, which revealed dimensions that simultaneously describe individual variation in self-reported experience and default-mode-network connectivity. We identified dimensions corresponding to traits of positive-habitual thoughts and spontaneous task-unrelated thoughts. These dimensions were uniquely related to aspects of cognition, such as executive control and the ability to generate information in a creative fashion, and independently distinguished well-being measures. These data provide the most convincing evidence to date for an ontological view of the mind-wandering state as encompassing a broad range of different experiences and show that this heterogeneity underlies mind wandering’s complex relationship to psychological functioning.
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Author Contributions: J. Smallwood, E. Jefferies, H.-T. Wang, and C. Murphy designed the study. H.-T. Wang, C. Murphy, and G. Poerio collected the data. The connection-strength and sparse canonical-correlation analysis pipeline was constructed by D. Bzdok and H.-T. Wang. Data were analyzed by H.-T. Wang, C. Murphy, and G. Poerio under the supervision of D. Bzdok, J. Smallwood, and E. Jefferies. H.-T. Wang and J. Smallwood drafted the manuscript. G. Poerio and D. Bzdok provided critical revisions. All the authors approved the final version of the manuscript prior to submission.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797617728727