The Science of Mind Wandering: Empirically Navigating the Stream of Consciousness
Open accessAbstract
Conscious experience is fluid; it rarely remains on one topic for an extended period without deviation. Its dynamic nature is illustrated by the experience of mind wandering, in which attention switches from a current task to unrelated thoughts and feelings. Studies exploring the phenomenology of mind wandering highlight the importance of its content and relation to meta-cognition in determining its functional outcomes. Examination of the information-processing demands of the mind-wandering state suggests that it involves perceptual decoupling to escape the constraints of the moment, its content arises from episodic and affective processes, and its regulation relies on executive control. Mind wandering also involves a complex balance of costs and benefits: Its association with various kinds of error underlines its cost, whereas its relationship to creativity and future planning suggest its potential value. Although essential to the stream of consciousness, various strategies may minimize the downsides of mind wandering while maintaining its productive aspects.
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Unlike exposure to often invisible environmental factors such as air pollution, we can potentially 're-live' our experiences of the natural world in memory, for instance during periods of 'mind wandering', and derive benefits from these recollections independent of those experienced in situ.
“We note, moreover, that unlike exposure to often invisible environmental factors such as air pollution, we can potentially ‘re-live’ our experiences of the natural world in memory, for instance during periods of ‘mind wandering’, and derive benefits from these recollections independent of those experienced in situ41.”
From Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing (2019) · cites this paper as [41]
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- Authors
- Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W.
- Affiliations
- University of York (GB)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- Venue
- Annual Review of Psychology
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2015-01-03
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 487-518
- ISSN
- 0066-4308 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-2085
- OpenAlex
- W2117194251
- Cited by
- 1,685
- References
- 34
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- FWCI
- 7.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Annual Review of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Mind wandering and attention
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Flow Experience in Various Fields
- Keywords
- mind wandering, stream of consciousness, attentional shift, metacognition, episodic memory, emotional processing, executive function, creativity, future planning
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Awareness, Consciousness, Humans, Thinking
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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