| Mind wandering(MW)is a very common psychological phenomenon,which refers to the process of attention shifting from the current tasks to the internal experience.Researchers have proposed the perceptual decoupling hypothesis to explain what happens when the mind wanders.That is,individual's attention would shift away from the current task or external stimuli,and couple with internal experience.In this thesis,three experiments were conducted to figure out the influence of frequencies of probe,the explicit cognition of mind wandering and the implicit cognition of mind wandering on the frequencies of mind wandering and on the cognition performance.Mind wandering(MW)refers to the process of attention shifting from the current external task to the internal experience.This psychological phenomenon is very common,and individuals experience mind wandering about 30-50% of their time every day.Researchers have focused on mind wandering a lot,and often use probes to measure mind wandering frequency.Relationships between mind wandering and cognitive control,working memory,and creative problem solving.According to the literature review,however,the probe frequency and the cognition of mind wandering are rarely mentioned in previous studies.But the probe frequency and cognition of mind wandering are key factors and not be avoided.Therefore,in this thesis,2 main experiments were conducted to figure out the influence of the probe frequency and the explicit or implicit mind wandering cognition with different valance on the frequencies of mind wandering and on the cognition performance.In the experiment 1,two visual working memory tasks were taken to explore the effects of frequencies of probe and attention loading on the frequencies of mind wandering and on the task performance.In the experiment 1a,the main task was the change detection task(CDT)and the visual working memory capacity was as the index of the task performance.Firstly,a within-subject design of 3(probe frequency: full frequency,high frequency,low frequency)×3(attention load: 4,6,8)was used to analyze their effects on task performance and mind wandering frequency.respectively.the results were as followed.(1)As far as the task performance,the interaction effect between probe frequency and attention load was not significant;the main effect of probe frequency was not significant as well;the attention load main effect was significant,and the task performance was better when attention load was relatively low.(2)As far as the mind wandering frequency,the interaction effect between probe frequency and attention load was significant.When attention loadwas 4,the mind wandering frequency of full frequency probe was significantly lower than that of high frequency and low frequency probe;when attention load was 6,the mind wandering frequency of full frequency probe was significantly lower than that of low frequency probe.It showed that the effect of probe frequency on mind wandering frequency was limited to the lower attention load condition.Secondly,the correlation between mind wandering frequency and task performance was not found.In the experiment 1b,the whole reporting task(WRT)was used and the average correct number was the index of the task performance.Firstly,the within-subject design of 2(probe frequency: high frequency,low frequency)×2(attention load :4,6)was used to analyze their effects on the task performance and mind wandering frequency.(1)As far as the task performance,the interaction effect of probe frequency and attention load,the main effect of probe frequency and the main effect of attention load were not significant.Results indicated that the probe frequency and attention load did not significantly affect the task performance.(2)In terms of mind wandering frequency,the interaction effect of probe frequency and attention load,attention load main effect were not significant;while probe frequency's main effect was significant,and the mind wandering frequency of high frequency probe was significantly lower than that of low frequency probe,which indicated that the probe frequency significantly affected the mind wandering frequency.The attention alerted more when the probe frequency was higher,consequently,the mind wandering frequency decreased,which was consistent with experiment 1a.Secondly,the correlation between the mind wandering frequency and WRT performance was significantly negative,which was different from experiment 1a,which could be the result of different cognitive resource demanding.In the experiment 1,the attention load and cognitive demanding were maintained at a medium or high level.Therefore,in the experiment 2,we used the classical paradigm of sustained attention to response task(SART)which was relatively with low cognitive demanding with the most widely used probe frequency(2.2%).The average accuracy rate was used as the index of SART task performance.Experiment 2 explored the cognition of mind wandering(negative,neutral,positive)in the explicit and implicit manner.The experiment 2 was divided into experiment 2a and experiment 2b.Experiment 2a manipulated the subjects' explicit cognition of mind wandering by showing different instructions with negative,neutral or positive cognition of mind wandering.Firstly,a between-subject one factor design was used to explore the effects of explicit cognition of mind wandering(negative,neutral,positive)on the SART task performance and mind wandering frequency.Some results were found.(1)In terms of task performance,the main effect of explicit cognition of mind wandering was not significant.(2)As far as the mind wandering frequency,the main effect of explicit cognition of mind wandering was significant.Specifically,the mind wandering frequency with negative explicit cognition of mind wandering was lower than that with positive explicit cognition.Secondly,the correlation relationships between the task performance and the mind wandering frequency were not significant whatever the explicit cognition,which wasconsistent with experiment 1a.In experiment 2b,the single category implicit association test(SC-IAT)and a sustained attention to response task and Mind Wandering Questionnaire(MWQ)were conducted to explore the relationship between implicit cognition of mind wandering and the task performance and the tendency of mind wandering during real life situation.We took the D score as the index of SC-IAT,and higher D score meat more positive implicit cognition of mind wandering.Firstly,the results of correlation analysis showed that the implicit cognition of mind wandering was significantly negatively correlated with task performance.That was,more negative the implicit cognition of mind wandering was,the better the task performance was.There was a significant positive correlation between the mind wandering frequency and the implicit cognition of mind wandering,which meat negative implicit cognition of mind wandering were with less mind wandering.But,there was not any significant correlation between MWQ and other indexes.What's more,experiment 2b showed that the effect of mind wandering frequency on task performance was realized by the implicit cognition of mind wandering.The higher the mind wandering frequency and the more positive implicit cognition of mind wandering was,the worse the task performance was.In this research,it was found that the mind wandering frequency was higher when the probe frequency was lower,which meant that higher probe frequency could lead to attention alertness and interrupt the process of attention shifting to internal experience.In addition,negative explicit and implicit cognition of mind wandering stood for lower mind wandering frequency.The negative cognition of mind wandering was beneficial to maintain attention alertness,which resulted in the decoupling of attention from internal experience and promoted coupling of attention with external task,which reduced the mind wandering frequency and supported the perceptual decoupling hypothesis of mind wandering. |
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