Can I get me out of my head? Exploring strategies for controlling the self-referential aspects of the mind-wandering state during reading

ABSTRACT

Trying to focus on a piece of text and keep unrelated thoughts at bay can be a surprisingly futile experience. The current study explored the effects of different instructions on participants’ capacity to control their mind-wandering and maximize reading comprehension, while reading. Participants were instructed to (a) enhance focus on what was read (external) or (b) enhance meta-awareness of mind-wandering (internal). To understand when these strategies were important, we induced a state of self-focus in half of our participants at the beginning of the experiment. Results replicated the negative association between mind-wandering and comprehension and demonstrated that both internal and external instructions impacted on the efficiency of reading following a period of induced self-focus. Techniques that foster meta-awareness improved task focus but did so at the detriment of reading comprehension, while promoting a deeper engagement while reading improved comprehension with no changes in reported mind-wandering. These data provide insight into how we can control mind-wandering and improve comprehension, and they underline that a state of self-focus is a condition under which they should be employed. Furthermore, these data support component process models that propose that the self-referent mental contents that arise during mind-wandering are distinguishable from those processes that interfere with comprehension.

KEYWORDS:

• Component processing
• Comprehension
• Implementation intentions
• Mind-wandering
• Reading
• Self-generated thought

Acknowledgements

We thank E. Sanders for technical support, and G. Hallam, J. Golchert, B. Jefferies, E. Aggius Vella, F. Ruby, M. Konishi, and I. De Caso for discussion on these data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Analysis of the effect of NYC-Q score on comprehension levels highlights a significant main effect of mind wandering, F(1, 83) = 16.111, p < .001, and a interaction effect approaching significance between prime and instruction type, F(2, 83) = 2.680, p = .074. Analysis of self-catching score (z-scored separately) highlights a significant main effect of mind-wandering on comprehension, F(1, 84) = 6.037, p = .016, and a trending interaction effect between prime and instruction, F(2, 83) = 1.981, p = .144. Moreover, both measures of mind-wandering yielded highly comparable results (NYC-Q: self-prime: external M = .142, none M = .306, internal M = −.488; other-prime: external M = −.235, none M = −.112, internal M = .260; self-catch: self-prime: external M = .311, none M =  .419, internal M = −.510; other-prime: external M = −.187, none M =  −.244, internal M = .099) and were correlated, r = .417, p < .001, Hence the analysis in the body of the text uses and reports the sum of both measures.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Studentship [Grant ES/J500215/1] from the Economic and Social Research Council to JGS, a grant [Grant E/30/30.13.0630/HVH/IE] from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds to JGS, a grant [Grant R305A110277] from the United States Office of Education to JS and JWS, and a Templeton Science of Prospection Award to JS.