The DOI matches its Crossref record; 32 of the 32 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Persistence of Thought: Evidence for a Role of Working Memory in the Maintenance of Task-Unrelated Thinking
Open accessAbstract
Tasks that tax working memory (WM) have consistently been found to decrease mind wandering. These findings may indicate that maintenance of mind wandering requires WM resources, such that mind wandering cannot persist when WM resources are being consumed by a task. An alternative explanation for these findings, however, is that mind wandering persists without the support of WM but is nonetheless decreased during any demanding task because good task performance requires that attention be restricted from task-unrelated thought (TUT). The present study tested these two competing theories by investigating whether individuals with greater WM resources mind-wander more during an undemanding task, as would be predicted only by the theory that WM supports TUT. We found that individuals with higher WM capacity reported more TUT in undemanding tasks, which suggests that WM enables the maintenance of mind wandering.
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“By contrast, individuals with improved executive control are able to limit their self-generated thought to non-demanding or unimportant contexts.10,176,178”
From The default network and self-generated thought: component processes, dynamic control, and clinical relevance (2014) · cites this paper as [176]
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Cites
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“This theory rests on findings that TUT increases when WM resources are available, such as during tasks that place few demands on WM resources (Mason et al., 2007; Teasdale et al., 1993).”
BackgroundA wandering mind is an unhappy mind
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“…WMC interaction, F(1, 72) = 9.3, p < .01, ηp 2 = .11, and with theory that high load induces low TUT regardless of an individual’s WM resources by exhausting limited perceptual capacity in task-relevant processing (Forster & Lavie, 2007, 2009; Lavie, 2005; Lavie, Hirst, de Fockert, & Viding, 2004).”
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“Such taskunrelated thought (TUT) presents a paradox: Although the spontaneous nature of TUT suggests that it is a resource-free process, its priority-driven nature suggests that it is a resourceintensive process (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006).”
BackgroundSelf-citationAn automated version of the operation span task
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“A recent laboratory study indicated that individuals who possess greater WM resources report less TUT during a go/no-go task commonly used to study mind wandering (the Sustained Attention to Response Task, or SART; McVay & Kane, 2009).”
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“%) relieve WM from proactively maintaining these goals (Kane & Engle, 2003).”
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“Conversely, these findings challenge claims that the sole influence of WM on TUT is inhibitory, restricting attention to the task at hand (McVay & Kane, 2009, 2010).”
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“Conversely, these findings challenge claims that the sole influence of WM on TUT is inhibitory, restricting attention to the task at hand (McVay & Kane, 2009, 2010).”
BackgroundMethodSmallwood, J., Davies, J. B., Heim, D., Finnigan, F., Sudbery, M. V., O’Connor, R. C., & Obonsawin, M. C. (2004) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2004.06.003 · Cited by 609 · cited 2×
“Further, when TUT does occur during tasks relying on WM, performance can decline (Cheyne, Solman, Carriere, & Smilek, 2009; Smallwood et al., 2004), which suggests that maintaining TUT may divert cognitive resources needed for tasks (Smallwood, Beach, Schooler, & Handy, 2008; Teasdale et al.”
BackgroundSelf-citationBack to the future: Autobiographical planning and the functionality of mind-wandering
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Self-citationGoing AWOL in the Brain: Mind Wandering Reduces Cortical Analysis of External Events
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“The average mind wanders during half of daily life, often thinking quite spontaneously about personal priorities unrelated to the task at hand (Giambra, 1995; Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010; Klinger & Cox, 1987–1988).”
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“Conversely, TUT decreases when WM resources are scarce, such as during tasks that do place a high demand on WM resources (Teasdale et al., 1995).”
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“To test the theory that WM resources are necessary for mind wandering, we examined whether higher WMC predicted more TUT during low-perceptual-load visual search, a context permissive to mind wandering (Forster & Lavie, 2009).”
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High Perceptual Load Makes Everybody Equal
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“This theory rests on findings that TUT increases when WM resources are available, such as during tasks that place few demands on WM resources (Mason et al., 2007; Teasdale et al., 1993).”
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“Indeed, task ease is known to increase TUT (McKiernan, D’Angelo, Kaufman, & Binder, 2006), and under certain conditions, WMC may facilitate visual search performance (Kane, Poole, Tuholski, & Engle, 2006; Poole & Kane, 2009; Sobel, Gerrie, Poole, & Kane, 2007).”
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Andrews‐Hanna, J. R., Smallwood, J., & Spreng, R. N. (2014) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/nyas.12360 · Cited by 2,102
Self-citationMind-wandering as spontaneous thought: a dynamic framework
Christoff, K., Irving, Z. C., Fox, K. C. R., Spreng, R. N., & Andrews-Hanna, J. R. (2016) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.113 · Cited by 1,376
The Science of Mind Wandering: Empirically Navigating the Stream of Consciousness
Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2015) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015331 · Cited by 1,685
“By contrast, when tasks make fewer demands, executive control tends to maximize the occurrence of task-unrelated thought both inside (Levinson et al. 2012, Rummel & Boywitt 2014) and outside of the laboratory (Kane et al. 2007).”
InfluentialSelf-citationSmallwood, J. (2013) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/a0030010 · Cited by 564
“However, such methods do not provide any evidence on what motivates the experience of mind wandering in the first place, that is, it is not necessarily the case that availability of working memory resources is an imperative stimulus for mind wandering to occur (see Levinson et al., 2012).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSelf-citationSmallwood, J., & Andrews-Hanna, J. (2013) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00441 · Cited by 433
“SGT under non-demanding situations is beneficial because it is associated with capacities such as creativity, patience and better cognitive control (Baird et al., 2011, 2012; Levinson et al., 2012; Smallwood et al., 2013).”
BackgroundSelf-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Levinson, D. B., Smallwood, J., & Davidson, R. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Max Planck Society (DE)
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2012-03-14
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 375-380
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- PMC
- PMC3328662
- OpenAlex
- W2129021060
- Cited by
- 232
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 18 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 9.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Fetzer Institute
- Association for Psychological Science
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH043454)
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (P01AT004952)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P30HD003352)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Mind wandering and attention
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Keywords
- mind wandering, working memory, task-unrelated thoughts, task demands, attentional control, cognitive resources
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Attention, Female, Humans, Male, Memory, Short-Term, Middle Aged, Task Performance and Analysis, Thinking
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