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How self-generated thought shapes mood--the relation between mind-wandering and mood depends on the socio-temporal content of thoughts.

ABSTRACT: Recent work has highlighted that the generation of thoughts unrelated to the current environment may be both a cause and a consequence of unhappiness. The current study used lag analysis to examine whether the relationship between self-generated thought and negative affect depends on the content of the thoughts themselves. We found that the emotional content could strongly predict subsequent mood (e.g. negative thoughts were associated with subsequent negative mood). However, this direct relationship was modulated by the socio-temporal content of the thoughts: thoughts that were past- and other-related were associated with subsequent negative mood, even if current thought content was positive. By contrast, future- and self-related thoughts preceded improvements of mood, even when current thought content was negative. These results highlight the important link between self-generated thought and mood and suggest that the socio-temporal content plays an important role in determining whether an individual's future affective state will be happy or sad.

SUBMITTER: Ruby FJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3806791 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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How self-generated thought shapes mood--the relation between mind-wandering and mood depends on the socio-temporal content of thoughts.

Ruby Florence J M FJ Smallwood Jonathan J Engen Haakon H Singer Tania T

PloS one 20131023 10

Recent work has highlighted that the generation of thoughts unrelated to the current environment may be both a cause and a consequence of unhappiness. The current study used lag analysis to examine whether the relationship between self-generated thought and negative affect depends on the content of the thoughts themselves. We found that the emotional content could strongly predict subsequent mood (e.g. negative thoughts were associated with subsequent negative mood). However, this direct relatio ...[more]

PMID: 24194889

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Project description:A significant body of literature supports the contention that pupil size varies depending on cognitive load, affective state, and level of drowsiness. Here we assessed whether oculometric measures such as gaze position, blink frequency and pupil size were correlated with the occurrence and time course of self-reported mind-wandering episodes. We recorded the pupil size of two subjects engaged in a monotonous breath counting task while keeping their eyes on a fixation cross. This task is conducive to producing mind-wandering episodes. Each subject performed ten 20-min sessions, for total duration of about 4 h. Subjects were instructed to report spontaneous mind-wandering episodes by pressing a button when they lost count of their breath. After each button press, subjects filled in a short questionnaire describing the characteristics of their mind-wandering episode. We observed larger pupil size during the breath-focusing period compared to the mind-wandering period (p < 0.01 for both subjects). Our findings contradict previous research showing a higher baseline pupil size during mind wandering episodes in visual tasks. We discuss possible explanations for this discrepancy. We also analyzed nine other oculometric measures including blink rate, blink duration and gaze position. We built a support vector machine (SVM) classifier and showed that mean pupil size was the most reliable predictor of mind wandering in both subjects. The classification accuracy of mind wandering data segments vs. breath-focusing data segments was 81% for the first subject and 77% for the second subject. Additionally, we analyzed oculometric measures in light of the phenomenological data collected in the questionnaires. We showed that how well subjects remembered their thoughts while mind wandering was positively correlated with pupil size (subject 1, p < 0.001; subject 2, p < 0.05). Feelings of well being were also positively correlated with pupil size (subject 1, p < 0.001; subject 2, p < 0.001). Our results suggest that oculometric data could be used as a neurocognitive marker of mind-wandering episodes.

Dataset Information

How self-generated thought shapes mood--the relation between mind-wandering and mood depends on the socio-temporal content of thoughts.

Publications

How self-generated thought shapes mood--the relation between mind-wandering and mood depends on the socio-temporal content of thoughts.

Similar Datasets

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