Mind Wandering

Mind-wandering is the situation in which a person’s attention and thoughts wander from a current task to some other inappropriate line of thought (Radvansky, Ashcraft 2014). This is a very common experience, and for most it is also an issue at times. Everyone wants to be able to concentrate and not have other thoughts in their mind when needed such as in school, work etc… Daydreaming, thinking about what you will eat, about your family, or when you read something and have no idea what you just read, are all examples of mind wandering (Radvansky, Ashcraft 2014). There have been claims stating that mind wandering is lower for low working memory capacity (WMC) subjects (Radvansky, Ashcraft 2014). Researchers have examined this and many other factors contributing to the mind wandering phenomenon. Many conclusions have been made upon different components of mind-wandering, thus we will explore various research studies that provide recent discoveries in mind wandering.

“The Accidental Mind”, by David J Linden, adequately covers the broad subject of human brain evolution by covering the intriguing concepts of love, memory, dreams, and religion. To make the non-fiction accessible to enthused readers, rather than advanced scientists, Linden separates the chapters by topic and evenly distributes his information by applying context to real world situations. His immense knowledge and research conducted shows through, with thorough explanations of some theories and concepts that are vital in biology.

This experiment is based on previous research done. For example, in 1969, in a research by Bower and Clark, no difference in the immediate recall scores of both groups was noted, but when later asked to recall, those who used narrative chaining recalled an average of 93% of the words compared to the control group which only recalled an average of 13% of words. In another experiment, participants who used narrative chaining remembered six times more information than participants who learned by simply repeating the words to themselves (Loftus, 1980). Narrative chaining is particularly useful when a person wants to remember information in a particular order. The aim of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of narrative chaining on memory. It is hypothesized that in a group of 59 participants aged 10-69 years old, participants who use narrative chaining to remember a list of words will remember a higher number and percentage of words when asked to write down as many words as possible through serial recall compared to participants who use maintenance rehearsal.

These effects of mind wandering has been shown to be inefficient towards learning and this is due to the fact that while we are engaged in mind wandering our attention is on our internal thoughts and feelings therefore mind wandering impairs the ability to integrate any new information from the external environment (Smallwood et al., 2007). Relating this principle to myself it was clearly evident to me that meditation serves as an antidote for a wandering mind it is beneficial in gaining wisdom about oneself, experiencing positive emotions and improving day to day learning (Moneyham and Schooler, 2013).

Saive, A., Royet, J., Garcia, S., Thévenet, M., & Plailly, J. (2015). "What-Where-Which" episodic retrieval requires conscious recollection and is promoted by semantic knowledge. Plos ONE, 10(12), 1-13. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143767

Attention and memory can improve by acknowledging and letting go of wandering thoughts, Wei mentions.

What's going on in your head? Until you know, there can be all sorts of issues of which you are unaware. Issues that run your life, partnerships, work, and play. If you are unaware of a problem, you can't do anything to fix it, right? This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness and present moment living are intimately interconnected.

There are billions of people on this earth with each person connected by the interconnected thread of thinking. Allowing the mind to be open and free invites thought to let loose and not be the most important participant. Thought as a whole is a roadblock in the way of any dialogue. Having thought during a dialogue and letting it drive the conversation stops any problem from getting solved or anything growing from more than just a one-sided conversation. It becomes a one-sided

Mindwalk, a cerebral movie released in 1990 and directed by Astra Taylor, intricately displays how the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences are all interconnected. The film is directed in an interesting and creative way that addresses the three different disciplines, and pays specific attention to their differences and similarities. Through the use of three main characters, Thomas the poet, Jack the American politician, and Sonia the Norwegian scientist, the film depicts diverse views on the three disciplines, and focuses on their respective interpretations of how the world works. The film is noteworthy because it shows various views on the world’s “crisis of perception”, which is a significant theme in the movie. The movie is non-fiction

In both of the tasks, the research participant confidently listed a word that was not originally part of the picture or the list of words. For example, the participant in test A1 listed the word ``door`` and omitted other details that he was not attention to it in the original picture. He added the words that made sense in completing the missing parts of the picture in his memory. In test A2, the research participant circled the words ``sleep`` because some of the words such as night, bed and snoring interfered with his information and made him imagined that this word was listed. After the distractive discussion about what he ate for breakfast, he also circled the words table and chair as he remembered the details of the moment breakfast and he recreated a memory that he believed it was accurate.

The doing mind is goal oriented such as trying to avoid a specific mood or behavior. The doing mind focuses on the steps to that need to be taken to achieve this goal and tries to lessen the gap between where the person is and where person wants to be (Prochaska & Norcross, 2014). If the person’s actions allow him or her to achieve the goal the person will be able to exit the doing mind. However, if the goal is not achieved, he or she will get stuck in the loop and will focus his or her attention on the gap and the problem. In contrast, the being mind focuses on experiencing the present mind as it is without judgement or any pressure to change it. The being mind has a direct and intimate experience with the present (NREPP, 2012).

Working memory's current understanding largely stems from the model in 1974 by Baddeley and Hitch, since then it has been recently advanced. The boss being the central executive, who controls and monitors all the information processing. The two other separate storage systems that support the central executive: phonological loop, who functions as the temporarily store for phonological information, and the visuospatial sketchpad where visual and spatial representations are temporarily stored and manipulated (Baddeley, 1996). The integrator of information from the subcomponents of working memory and long term memory is known as the episodic buffer, it is the recently proposed addition (Baddeley, 2000). Many people when they think of an individual

Mind wandering is one of the most used mental activities a person uses throughout the day. You may be planning to make dinner for the evening, driving to the mall, or even when you want to go sleep. As we think about these things, our mind can wander to different ideas, or thought and we could arise at a new problem or situation. We have these creative thoughts when we are engaged in something else. Some research suggests that mind wandering can enhance creativity, but also has been shown to decrease reading comprehension and memory tests of working memory.

The Forgot-it-all-along (FIA) effect is a memory phenomenon in which prior instances of remembering are forgotten (Arnold & Lindsay, 2002) (Schooler, Ambadar, & Bendiksen,

Strategies and devices that help us remember information that requires effortful processing are: encoding its meaning, visualizing, and mentally organizing the