Abstract
Our understanding of mind wandering (MW) has dramatically increased over the past decade. Studies have shown that in the vast majority of cases, MW is directed to times other than the present, and a bias toward the future has been reported (prospective bias). The processing of time is not independent of the processing of space: humans represent time along a spatial continuum, on a “mental time line” (MTL). In cultures with a left to right reading/writing system, the MTL expands from left to right. Capitalizing on these findings, here we aimed at investigating the effects of visuo-spatial processing on the temporal orientation of spontaneous MW, and specifically we asked whether we could steer the temporal focus of MW towards the past or the future, by experimentally inducing a leftward and a rightward orienting of attention, respectively. To this aim, we experimentally manipulated the spatial orientation demands associated with the focal task in two independent groups, with a leftward orienting of attention (left-pointing arrows, LA group) and a rightward orienting of attention (right-pointing arrows, RA group). We found that the temporal orientation of MW critically depended on the spatial orientation demands of the task: specifically, the proportion of spontaneous past-oriented MW episodes was higher under the induction of a leftward orienting attention (LA group) than under the induction of a rightward orienting attention (RA group). The opposite pattern was found for spontaneous future-oriented MW episodes. Possible mechanisms involved in this effect and their implications for research on MW and spontaneous cognition are discussed.
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Notes
Since we aimed at comparing the two groups of participants, and thus we needed to carry out independent sample t tests, we computed with G*Power3 (Faul, Erdfleder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) that with a total of 50 participants we could have reached a power of approximately 0.80 to statistically (alpha = 0.05) detect effects in the upper part of the moderate range of effect sizes (in terms of Cohen’s d, a moderate effect is in the 0.50–0.80 range, we mean here 0.65–0.80). We enrolled a few more than 50 in case some participants had to be excluded because they did not meet inclusion criteria or turned out to be outliers.
The concept of current concern (Klinger, 1999, 2013) was described as follows: Now we ask you to indicate your “current concerns”, that is the most relevant and important topics in this period of your life, your “hot topics”. By current concerns we do not mean just “problems”. You might have concerns about unpleasant things that you want to get rid of, prevent, or avoid. Or you might have concerns about pleasant things you want to get, obtain, or accomplish. Current concerns could be both emotionally negative and positive.
To identify the outliers, we used two methods/criteria: (i) standard deviation higher than 2.5, (ii) median absolute deviation (as suggested by Leys, Ley, Klein, Bernard, and Licata, 2013). This participant was classified as outlier according to both criteria.
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Vannucci, M., Pelagatti, C., Chiorri, C. et al. Space–time interaction: visuo-spatial processing affects the temporal focus of mind wandering. Psychological Research 83, 698–709 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1080-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1080-x