Mind Wandering, Noncontingent Processing, and Recall in Reading

Abstract

In the present research, we attempted to manipulate noncontingent processing in reading, that is, mental activities not dependent on processing the words of the text. An important class of noncontingent processing is mind wandering, but noncontingent processing may include other task-related activities as well. In our study, participants read stories sentence by sentence, and we manipulated the interval between sentences. In the immediate condition, there was no delay; in the constant-delay condition, there was a 2-s delay before the next sentence; and in the random-delay condition, the delay was randomly either 0 or 2 s. Participants read a story in each of these conditions. Periodically while reading each story, participants were interrupted and asked to rate whether they were on task. Although delay had little overall effect, it moderated the relationship between on-task rating and recall: In the two delay conditions, recall increased with on-task rating, but there was no such effect in the immediate condition. This pattern of results suggests that introducing the delay increased noncontingent processing but the nature of that processing varied. For example, in some cases the delay may have increased mind wandering, leading to poorer recall; in other cases, the delay may have increased elaboration and reflection concerning the story world, leading to increased recall.