A Multilevel Approach to Explore the Wandering Mind and Its Connections with Mindfulness and Personality.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Cantone D
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8469085 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:The 44-item and 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality scales are widely used, but there is a lack of psychometric data for Chinese versions. Eight surveys (total N = 2,496, aged 18-82), assessed a Chinese-language BFI-44 and/or an independently translated Chinese-language BFI-10. Most BFI-44 items loaded strongly or predominantly on the expected dimension, and values of Cronbach's alpha ranged .698-.807. Test-retest coefficients ranged .694-.770 (BFI-44), and .515-.873 (BFI-10). The BFI-44 and BFI-10 showed good convergent and discriminant correlations, and expected associations with gender (females higher for agreeableness and neuroticism), and age (older age associated with more conscientiousness and agreeableness, and also less neuroticism and openness). Additionally, predicted correlations were found with chronotype (morningness positive with conscientiousness), mindfulness (negative with neuroticism, positive with conscientiousness), and mind wandering/daydreaming frequency (negative with conscientiousness, positive with neuroticism). Exploratory analysis found that the Self-discipline facet of conscientiousness positively correlated with morningness and mindfulness, and negatively correlated with mind wandering/daydreaming frequency. Furthermore, Self-discipline was found to be a mediator in the relationships between chronotype and mindfulness, and chronotype and mind wandering/daydreaming frequency. Overall, the results support the utility of the BFI-44 and BFI-10 for Chinese-language big five personality research.
| S-EPMC4769279 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The human brain frequently generates thoughts and feelings detached from environmental demands. Investigating the rich repertoire of these mind-wandering experiences is challenging, as it depends on introspection and mapping its content requires an unknown number of dimensions. We recently developed a retrospective self-report questionnaire-the Amsterdam Resting-State Questionnaire (ARSQ)-which quantifies mind wandering along seven dimensions: "Discontinuity of Mind," "Theory of Mind," "Self," "Planning," "Sleepiness," "Comfort," and "Somatic Awareness." Here, we show using confirmatory factor analysis that the ARSQ can be simplified by standardizing the number of items per factor and extending it to a 10-dimensional model, adding "Health Concern," "Visual Thought," and "Verbal Thought." We will refer to this extended ARSQ as the "ARSQ 2.0." Testing for effects of age and gender revealed no main effect for gender, yet a moderate and significant negative effect for age on the dimensions of "Self," "Planning," and "Visual Thought." Interestingly, we observed stable and significant test-retest correlations across measurement intervals of 3-32 months except for "Sleepiness" and "Health Concern." To investigate whether this stability could be related to personality traits, we correlated ARSQ scores to proxy measures of Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory, revealing multiple significant associations for the trait "Self-Directedness." Other traits correlated to specific ARSQ dimensions, e.g., a negative association between "Harm Avoidance" and "Comfort." Together, our results suggest that the ARSQ 2.0 is a promising instrument for quantitative studies on mind wandering and its relation to other psychological or physiological phenomena.
| S-EPMC3982068 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveMind wandering is a common phenomenon among athletes during training and competition, and can lead to poor performance. We attempt to clarify which personality type is more prone to mind wandering and the role of trait anxiety between them.MethodsSix hundred and eighty-one athletes participated in this cross sectional study. Participants completed the Athlete Mind Wandering Scale, The Chinese adjectives scale of Big-Five factor personality short scale version and Pre-Competition Emotion Scale-Trait questionnaires. The survey data was tested for common method biases, Pearson correlation analysis, and structural equation model by SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.0.ResultsCommon method biases can be accepted in this study. (1) Athletes' neuroticism was significantly and positively correlated with trait anxiety and mind wandering, respectively, athletes' extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were significantly and negatively correlated with trait anxiety and mind wandering respectively; the athletes' trait anxiety was significantly and positively correlated with mind wandering; (2) By constructing mediating models, the direct effects of athletes' extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness on mind wandering were insignificant. The mediating effect of athletes' trait anxiety between the five personalities and mind wandering was significant.ConclusionTrait anxiety in athletes plays a fully mediating role between the relationship of personality and mind wandering. Athletes' extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness can all have an impact on mind wandering through the mediating role of trait anxiety. Athletes can use the mediating role of trait anxiety to intervene the frequency of mind wandering.
| S-EPMC10897018 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Changes in mind-wandering (MW) and involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM) in dysphoria have been explored with conflicting results. The aim of this study was to evaluate both MW and IAM in a group of 23 stable dysphoric participants compared to 37 controls and to compare their thoughts characteristics (i.e., specificity, visual perspective, time orientation, and emotional valence). To make this study comparable with previous research, we used two different monotonous vigilance tasks (with and without verbal interference stimuli). Our results showed a significantly greater focus on MW thoughts in dysphoria. The characteristics of spontaneous thoughts content did not differ significantly between our dysphoric participants and controls, which is not in favor of strong emotional dysfunction. Our results suggest a difficulty to regulate the occurrence of self-generated thoughts rather than their content, that may confer to dysphoric subjects increased cognitive risk to develop a major depressive episode.
| S-EPMC7533624 | biostudies-literature
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.
| S-EPMC3920102 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveFunctional connectivity in intrinsic brain networks, namely, the triple network, which includes the salience network, default mode network (DMN) and central executive network (CEN), has been suggested as prominent, major networks involved in human cognition and mental state-mindfulness, mind-wandering and resting-state. Despite the established roles of functional connections within and between intrinsic networks, there has been limited research on the effective connectivity of mindfulness, mind-wandering and resting-state using the triple network, as well as on their direct comparisons.MethodsWe employed spectral dynamic causal modeling to compare effective connectivity patterns across mindfulness (i.e. attention focused on physical sensations of breathing), mind-wandering (i.e. connecting thoughts) and resting-state (i.e. relaxing while remaining calm and awake) conditions using functional MRI data of healthy subjects who underwent ambulatory training by practicing mindfulness and mind-wandering (N = 59).ResultsWhen comparing mindfulness and mindwandering conditions, our analysis results revealed that salience network and CEN interacted depending on mindfulness or mind-wandering. When mindfulness or mind-wandering was compared to resting-state, mindfulness increased the effective connectivity from the left CEN to salience network through DMN, whereas mindwandering increased the effective connectivity from the DMN to right CEN.ConclusionTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine possible differences in effective connectivity patterns among mindfulness, mind-wandering and resting-state using the triple network. We believe that our findings will provide deeper insights into the neural substrates of mindfulness compared to mind-wandering and resting-state.
| S-EPMC8893127 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveThis study investigates excessive mind wandering (MW) in adult ADHD using a new scale: the Mind Excessively Wandering Scale (MEWS).MethodData from two studies of adult ADHD was used in assessing the psychometric properties of the MEWS. Case-control differences in MW, the association with ADHD symptoms, and the contribution to functional impairment were investigated.ResultsThe MEWS functioned well as a brief measure of excessive MW in adult ADHD, showing good internal consistency (α > .9), and high sensitivity (.9) and specificity (.9) for the ADHD diagnosis, comparable with that of existing ADHD symptom rating scales. Elevated levels of MW were found in adults with ADHD, which contributed to impairment independently of core ADHD symptom dimensions.ConclusionFindings suggest excessive MW is a common co-occurring feature of adult ADHD that has specific implications for the functional impairments experienced. The MEWS has potential utility as a screening tool in clinical practice to assist diagnostic assessment.
| S-EPMC6429624 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Mind-wandering refers to the process of thinking task-unrelated thoughts while performing a task. The dynamics of mind-wandering remain elusive because it is difficult to track when someone's mind is wandering based only on behavior. The goal of this study is to develop a machine-learning classifier that can determine someone's mind-wandering state online using electroencephalography (EEG) in a way that generalizes across tasks. In particular, we trained machine-learning models on EEG markers to classify the participants' current state as either mind-wandering or on-task. To be able to examine the task generality of the classifier, two different paradigms were adopted in this study: a sustained attention to response task (SART) and a visual search task. In both tasks, probe questions asking for a self-report of the thoughts at that moment were inserted at random moments, and participants' responses to the probes were used to create labels for the classifier. The 6 trials preceding an off-task response were labeled as mind-wandering, whereas the 6 trials predicting an on-task response were labeled as on-task. The EEG markers used as features for the classifier included single-trial P1, N1, and P3, the power and coherence in the theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (8.5-12 Hz) bands at PO7, Pz, PO8, and Fz. We used a support vector machine as the training algorithm to learn the connection between EEG markers and the current mind-wandering state. We were able to distinguish between on-task and off-task thinking with an accuracy ranging from 0.50 to 0.85. Moreover, the classifiers were task-general: The average accuracy in across-task prediction was 60%, which was above chance level. Among all the extracted EEG markers, alpha power was most predictive of mind-wandering.
| S-EPMC6711882 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Although mind wandering during reading is known to be affected by text difficulty, the nature of this relationship is not yet fully understood. To examine this issue, we conducted an experiment in which participants read non-fiction texts that varied along five levels of difficulty under naturalistic conditions. Difficulty levels were determined based on Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels and verified with Coh-Metrix indices. Mind wandering was measured with thought probes. We predicted that text difficulty and mind wandering have a U-shaped (i.e., quadratic) relationship. Contrary to our expectations, but in line with some prior studies, mind wandering linearly increased with text difficulty. Additionally, text interest moderated the effect of text difficulty on mind wandering. Finally, mind wandering was associated with worse performance on a comprehension test. Together, our findings extend previous work by showing that (a) a linear relationship between difficulty and mind wandering exists during common page-by-page reading of pre-existing texts and that (b) this relationship holds across a broad range of difficulty levels.
| S-EPMC8821482 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Mind wandering (MW) is a common feature of the human experience occurring when our attention shifts from the task at hand to inner thoughts. MW seems to be often future-oriented and could be used to help people to carry out their planned actions (Prospective Memory PM). Here, we tested the link between MW and the ability to perform PM intentions. We assessed MW and PM over 15 days using experience-sampling probes via mobile phone (226 participants) associated with a naturalistic PM task. We confirmed that MW occupies a significant proportion of our mental activity (40%). This time seems to be mainly used to project ourselves into the future (64%), whether to anticipate and imagine the long term (20%) or to plan daily obligations (44%). Intriguingly, only past-oriented thoughts (9%) predict the PM performance. We discuss the possible functional role played by MW in maintaining intentions in mind.
| S-EPMC9497275 | biostudies-literature