Mind wandering, meaning, and action

走神、意义和行动

• 批准号: RGPIN-2014-04981
• 负责人: Dixon, Peter
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: University of Alberta
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=649372
• 关键词: Mind; wandering; meaning; action

Mind wandering is a ubiquitous cognitive phenomena, common in education and work environments and other day-to-day activities. A central question is how one should view this prevalence. On the one hand, mind wandering can be characterized as an undesirable failure of executive control. If this is a reasonable perspective, we should seek ways to minimize mind wandering. On the other hand, mind wandering might be interpreted as a product of the normal and appropriate variations in the levels of priority of ones mental goals. For example, the goal of performing the current target task may become temporarily less important than the goal of thinking about other things. As such, mind wandering might foster suitable or even needful processes such as planning, creativity, and mental and physical homeostasis. If this latter perspective is correct, we should attempt to delineate under what circumstances and to what degree mind wandering is beneficial. In order to disentangle these possibilities, we need to understand the nature of mind wandering and how it is related to ongoing cognitive activities. The proposed research is intended to develop such an understanding through a unified theoretical analysis of mind wandering: In particular, I argue that mind wandering diverts resources from the interpretation and assignment of meaning to the current context. As a shorthand, I refer to this as "meaningful processing" of the task at hand. In turn, meaningful processing involves relating the current situation to one's semantic knowledge and prior experience stored in memory. Thus, deficits in mind wandering may occur because one's ability to carry out this required memory retrieval is limited. In the proposed research, this overarching thesis is applied to phenomena in the control of action, cognitive control, and text comprehension. In the control of action, mind wandering is predicted to interfere with the ability to tune actions on the basis of recent experience; in the domain of cognitive control, mind wandering is predicted to interfere with the ability to modulate task performance based on instructions or set; and in text comprehension, mind wandering is predicted to interfere with the use of knowledge and experience in the construction of text memory representations. Experiments are described to test and extend these predictions in each of these domains. The proposed research thus provides a broad-based program investigating the nature of mind-wandering deficits. The long-term objective is to gain an understanding of the phenomenon of mind wandering and how it affects cognitive performance. In particular, the proposed theoretical analysis in terms of memory retrieval provides important clues as to when mind wandering will interfere with ongoing productive activity and when it will not.

走神是一种普遍存在的认知现象，常见于教育、工作环境和其他日常活动中。一个核心问题是人们应该如何看待这种普遍现象。一方面，走神可以被描述为执行控制的不良失败。如果这是一个合理的观点，我们就应该寻找方法来尽量减少走神。另一方面，走神可能被解释为一个人的心理目标优先级正常且适当变化的产物。例如，执行当前目标任务的目标可能暂时变得不如思考其他事情的目标重要。因此，走神可能会促进适当甚至必要的过程，例如计划、创造力以及身心平衡。如果后一种观点是正确的，我们应该尝试描述走神在什么情况下以及在多大程度上是有益的。为了理清这些可能性，我们需要了解走神的本质以及它与持续的认知活动之间的关系。拟议的研究旨在通过对思维游移的统一理论分析来形成这样的理解：特别是，我认为思维游移将资源从意义的解释和分配转移到当前的上下文。作为简写，我将其称为对手头任务的“有意义的处理”。反过来，有意义的处理涉及将当前情况与记忆中存储的语义知识和先前经验联系起来。因此，由于一个人执行所需记忆检索的能力有限，因此可能会出现走神缺陷。在拟议的研究中，这一总体论文应用于行动控制、认知控制和文本理解中的现象。在行动控制方面，预计走神会干扰根据最近的经验调整行动的能力；在认知控制领域，走神预计会干扰根据指令或设定调节任务表现的能力；在文本理解中，预计走神会干扰在构建文本记忆表征时知识和经验的使用。描述的实验是为了在每个领域中测试和扩展这些预测。因此，拟议的研究提供了一个基础广泛的计划，调查走神缺陷的本质。长期目标是了解走神现象及其如何影响认知表现。特别是，所提出的记忆检索方面的理论分析提供了重要线索，说明走神何时会干扰正在进行的生产活动，何时不会。