Mind Wandering

Unstick a Wandering Mind for Task Performance

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Mind Wandering Task Performance2 Van VogtBy John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“people are substantially less happy when their minds are wandering than when they’re not, which is unfortunate considering we do it so often. Moreover, the size of this effect is large—how often a person’s mind wanders, and what they think about when it does, is far more predictive of happiness than how much money they make, for example.” – Matt Killingsworth

 

We spend a tremendous amount of time with our minds wandering and not on the task or the environment at hand. We daydream, plan for the future, review the past, ruminate on our failures, exalt in our successes. In fact, we spend almost half of our waking hours off task with our mind wandering. Mindfulness is the antithesis of mind wandering. When we’re mindful, we’re paying attention to what is occurring in the present moment. In fact, the more mindful we are the less the mind wanders and mindfulness training reduces mind wandering.

 

You’d think that if we spend so much time with the mind wandering it must be enjoyable. But, in fact research has shown that when our mind is wandering we are actually unhappier than when we are paying attention to what is at hand. There are times when mind wandering may be useful, especially in regard to planning and creative thinking. But, for the most part, it interferes with our concentration on the task at hand. People differ in the amount of time their mind wanders and, when the mind wanders, the difficulty they have disengaging from the off-task thoughts and returning to present moment attention. This is referred to as the stickiness of mind-wandering.

 

In today’s Research News article “Self-Reported Stickiness of Mind-Wandering Affects Task Performance.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1295900037100586/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4870246/

Van Vugt and Broers investigate the relationship of this stickiness of mind-wandering to how well individuals do in performing a task that requires attention, a go, no-go decision task. On some of the trials the subjects, prior to task onset, were reminded of one of the things that were currently on their mind, as a means of evoking mind wandering. On other trials, no such reminders were present. Participants were asked what their mental state was during the trial and how difficult it was to disengage from the wandering thoughts and return to attention to the task, stickiness.

 

They found that establishing a current concern prior to the trial did not increase mind wandering, but decreased the accuracy of performance. But, as expected, when the mind was wandering, it interfered with performance of the attention demanding task. They also found that the more difficulty that the participant had in disengaging from wandering thoughts, stickiness, the more mind wandering occurred and the lower the accuracy of response in the task. So, not only the amount of mind wandering, but also the stickiness of the mind wandering was detrimental to performance on a task that demands attention.

 

These results are interesting and show that mind wandering and stickiness can be studied in the laboratory under controlled conditions. It remains to be seen if mindfulness training can improve this kind of task performance and reduce mind wandering and stickiness. It has been demonstrated that mindfulness improves attention and cognitive task performance. But, it is not known whether it can change stickiness. Regardless, it is clear that we must unstick a wandering mind for task performance.

 

“In mindfulness what gets stronger are the brain’s circuits for noticing when your mind has wandered, letting go, and returning to your chosen focus. And that’s just what we need to stay with during that one important task we’re working on.” – Daniel Goleman

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Van Vugt, M. K., & Broers, N. (2016). Self-Reported Stickiness of Mind-Wandering Affects Task Performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 732. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00732

 

Abstract

When asked to perform a certain task, we typically spend a decent amount of time thinking thoughts unrelated to that task–a phenomenon referred to as “mind-wandering.” It is thought that this mind-wandering is driven at least in part by our unfinished goals and concerns. Previous studies have shown that just after presenting a participant with their own concerns, their reports of task-unrelated thinking increased somewhat. However, effects of these concerns on task performance were somewhat inconsistent. In this study we take the opposite approach, and examine whether task performance depends on the self-reported thought content. Specifically, a particularly intriguing aspect of mind-wandering that has hitherto received little attention is the difficulty of disengaging from it, in other words, the “stickiness” of the thoughts. While presenting participants with their own concerns was not associated with clear effects on task performance, we showed that the reports of off-task thinking and variability of response times increased with the amount of self-reported stickiness of thoughts. This suggests that the stickiness of mind-wandering is a relevant variable, and participants are able to meaningfully report on it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4870246/

Just Breathe

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“When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.” ~Svatmarama

 

There are two basic forms of meditation, focused meditation and open monitoring. For the beginner, most teachers employ the focused meditation strategy. This involves placing attention on a single object of meditation and holding it there. Focusing on the breath is the most common object for focused meditation. But, there are many others including single thoughts or mental objects, or even mantras.

 

Although there has been research comparing focused to open monitoring meditation, there has been very little attention paid to different objects of focused meditation. The question has not been answered as to whether it is better to focus on the breath or some other mental object. The whole idea of focusing on an object is to eliminate wind wandering. So one way to compare the effectiveness of different objects for focused meditation is by comparing their relative abilities to prevent mind wandering or conversely to suppress thoughts.

 

In today’s Research News article “Better control with less effort: The advantage of using focused-breathing strategy over focused-distraction strategy on thought suppression”

Ju and colleagues randomly assigned undergraduate students to a focused breathing condition or a focused mental object (blue sports car) condition. Students were instructed to focus on their respective object for 2 3-minute sessions and report each time their mind wandered. The students were then measured for thought intrusions during a thought suppression task. They found that the focused breathing condition produced significantly fewer mind wanderings and thought intrusions than the focused mental object condition. For the focused mental object condition, the higher the participants working memory capacity the fewer mind wanderings and thought intrusions. This was not true for the focused breathing condition. This suggests that focusing on a mental object requires mental resources and employs a ‘top down’ strategy while simply focusing on the breath does not.

 

So, it appears that focusing on the breath requires less mental resources and is more successful in preventing mind wandering and thought intrusions than focusing on a mental object. This suggests that the ancient practice of focused breathing meditation became so popular for a reason. It is easier to do and it produces better results.

 

It should be kept in mind, however, that the students were only asked to focus for 2 3-minute periods. It is possible that the superiority of focusing on the breathing may only be true for beginners over very brief periods. There is a need to repeat the study with experienced meditators and for longer periods of focus. Nevertheless, it has become common practice with open monitoring meditation to always begin a session with focusing on the breath and only later moving into open monitoring. The current results suggest that this may be very good practice, helping to get the meditator focused, with minimal mind wandering before moving on to open monitoring where it is more difficult to maintain focus and keep the mind from wandering.

 

So, just breathe to better focus in meditation.

 

“So don’t beat yourself up the next time you find yourself far away from where your mind was supposed to be. It’s the nature of the mind to wander. Use it as an opportunity to become more aware of your own mental experience. But you may still want to return to the present moment—so you can come up with an answer to that question everyone is waiting for.” – Wendy Hasenkamp
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are available at the Contemplative Studies Blog http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/

Reset the Default Mode Network with Meditation

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“I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.” – Steven Wright

 

We spend a tremendous amount of our time with our minds wandering and not on the task or the environment at hand. We daydream, plan for the future, review the past, ruminate on our failures, exalt in our successes. In fact we spend almost half of our waking hours off task with our mind wandering. You’d think that if we spend so much time doing this it must be enjoyable. But, in fact research has shown that when our mind is wandering we are actually unhappier than when we are paying attention to what is at hand.

 

A system of the brain known as the Default Mode Network (DMN) becomes active during wind wandering and relatively quiet during focused on task behavior. It is involved when we are engaged in internally focused tasks such as recalling deeply personal memories, daydreaming, sleeping, imagining the future and trying to take the perspective of others. The DMN involves neural structures including the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior and posterior cingulate cortices, precuneus, inferior parietal cortex, and lateral temporal cortex. These areas of the DMN are functionally connected, such that they are simultaneously active during mind wandering.

 

In today’s Research News article “The default mode network as a biomarker for monitoring the therapeutic effects of meditation”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1131158196908105/?type=3&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4460295/

Simon and colleagues review the literature on the DMN and note that its malfunction is associated with psychiatric disorders and returns to normal upon successful treatment of the disorders. The DMN activity is also affected by meditation which has also been shown to produces improvements in psychiatric disorders. So there would appear to be a common thread here; DMN activity.

 

They find that the DMN is abnormally active in a number of psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, successful treatments of these disorders are associated with a return to normal activity in the DMN. For example when a schizophrenic patient responds favorably to antipsychotic medication, DMN activity is normalized.

 

Meditation training is devoted to improving present moment awareness and decreasing mind wandering. As a result meditation training reduces the activity of the DMN. In addition, meditation has been shown to be beneficial for the treatment of schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, addictions, alcoholism, and mild cognitive impairments.

 

As a result of these findings Simon and colleagues conclude that the state of the DMN may be an excellent indicator of the psychiatric health of the individual and it can also be an indicator of therapeutic improvement. In addition, it is a metric of the effectiveness of meditation for the treatment of disease. Hence, it is postulated that the DMN may be the common thread linking, psychiatric disorders, to therapeutic effectiveness, and to mindfulness training. If this is true it could lead to more effective diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses with meditation.

 

Needless to say the Default Mode Network (DMN) may be much more important than just the seat of mind wandering. It may be a crucial for mental health.

 

So, reset the default mode network with meditation and improve psychiatric health.

 

“Remember that breath walking – as with any meditation technique – should not be pursued with a grim determination to ‘get it right.’ The point is to cultivate openness, relaxation and awareness, which can include awareness of your undisciplined, wandering mind.” – Andrew Weil

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Mindfulness is not Always Good for Creativity

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“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs

 

Mindfulness is the ability to focus on what is transpiring in the present moment. It involves a greater emphasis on attention to the immediate stimulus environment. Mindful people generally have better attentional abilities and have fewer intrusive thoughts and less mind wandering. As a result mindfulness has been shown to be associated with differences in thought processes (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/category/research-news/cognition/). Most of the time these differences are associated with beneficial results, but sometimes they can lead to negative outcomes including a greater tendency to have false memories (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/10/15/meditation-is-not-always-a-good-thing/). Given the differences in thinking and attention the question arises as to the effect of mindfulness on creativity. Does it make the individual more creative or does it interfere with the creative process?

 

In today’s Research News article “Mind wandering “Ahas” versus mindful reasoning: alternative routes to creative solutions”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1122979707725954/?type=3&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469818/

Zedelius and colleagues investigate the relationship between mindfulness and creativity. They measured mindfulness and then tested creativity with a Compound Remote Associations test. In this test the participant is asked to discover a word that connects three other words. For example the individual is given “ache, hunter, cabbage.”  An appropriate response might be “head” which links the words ‘head ache’, ‘head hunter’, and ‘head of cabbage.’ This solution can be arrived at by carefully analyzing the words and recalling words that are associated with each one to find a common associate, or it can be solved with insight where the solution just suddenly appears. After a solution was found the participants were asked to identify which of these strategies they used or a combination of both.

 

Zedelius and colleagues found that when the problem was solved by insight, mindfulness was associated with poorer performance. On the other hand when it was solved analytically mindfulness was associated with better performance. In other words, mindfulness improved analytic thinking but interfered with insightful thinking. These results make sense if it is considered that analytical thinking requires focused attention which is what is promoted by mindfulness. On the other hand, insightful thinking, thinking outside of the box, often involves allowing the mind to wander in different directions bringing in new and different possible solutions. Since mindfulness is associated with less mind wandering, it seems logical that it would interfere with the process of insight.

 

So, mindfulness is not a uniformly good thing. Although we usually think of mind wandering and being off task as a bad thing to be inhibited, that mind wandering, in fact, may be the source of insightful creativity. Our schools focus on analytical thinking and many are adopting mindfulness training into their curriculum to improve attention and school performance. But, as desirable as this may be, it may come at the cost of lowering creative insights. Perhaps, there is a need to train the student to be mindful when appropriate but to let the mind wander at other times to promote creativity.

 

So, practice mindfulness but realize that it may make you less insightful.

 

“To be and to be creative are synonymous. It is impossible to be and not to be creative. But that impossible thing has happened, that ugly phenomenon has happened, because all your creative sources have been plugged, blocked, destroyed, and your whole energy has been forced into some activity that the society thinks is going to pay.” – Osho
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies