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Re-examining the effect of motivation on intentional and unintentional task-unrelated thought: accounting for thought constraint produces novel results

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Abstract

It has been proposed that motivating participants to perform well on a cognitive task ought to lead to decreases in rates of intentional, but not unintentional, task-unrelated thought (TUT; a commonly studied variety of mind wandering). However, at odds with this prediction, research has found that increasing motivation results in decreases in both intentional and unintentional TUTs. One possible explanation for this surprising finding is that standard assessments of TUT may inadvertently conflate TUTs with another variety of mind wandering: unconstrained thought. If so, then deconfounding task-unrelated and unconstrained varieties of mind wandering might produce the predicted effect of a decrease in intentional, but not unintentional, TUT when motivation is increased. To explore this possibility, in the present study, participants completed a sustained-attention task after receiving standard instructions (normal-motivation condition) or instructions informing them that they could leave the study early if they achieved a certain level of performance (motivated condition). Throughout the task, we assessed rates of TUT (both intentional and unintentional) and unconstrained thoughts. Consistent with prior work, the results indicated that motivated participants reported being on-task significantly more frequently than non-motivated participants. However, unlike previous work, we found that when deconfounding TUTs and unconstrained thoughts, participants in the motivation condition reported significantly fewer bouts of intentional TUT than those in the non-motivation condition, but no differences in rates of unintentional TUT were observed between groups. These results suggest that (a) motivation specifically targets intentional TUT and (b) standard assessments of TUT conflate task-relatedness and thought constraint.

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Availability of data and material

Data analysis code and anonymized data will be available on OSF (https://osf.io/3jqcr/) following acceptance.

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Program code will be available on OSF (https://osf.io/3jqcr/) following acceptance.

Notes

  1. In the Motivated group, to meet the performance criterion for leaving the experiment early, participants merely had to respond (via a spacebar press) to at least one of the 900 MRT tones (Seli et al., 2019). All participants met and surpassed this criterion and were therefore allowed to leave the experiment early (after completing 900 MRT trials). Participants in the Control group were informed, after completing 900 MRT trials, that they could leave the experiment early, irrespective of their performance on the MRT (although all of these participants likewise met and surpassed the criterion that we had set for the Motived group).

  2. Also see O’Neill et al., (2020).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant awarded to Daniel Smilek.

Funding

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant awarded to Daniel Smilek.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Alyssa C. Smith, Brandon C. W. Ralph & Daniel Smilek

  2. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, 417 Chapel Dr, Durham, NC, 22708, USA

    Nicholaus P. Brosowsky & Paul Seli

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  1. Alyssa C. Smith
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Correspondence to Alyssa C. Smith.

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Smith, A.C., Brosowsky, N.P., Ralph, B.C.W. et al. Re-examining the effect of motivation on intentional and unintentional task-unrelated thought: accounting for thought constraint produces novel results. Psychological Research 86, 87–97 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01487-5

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