What is it about?
We used a "sustained attention task" to test what happens to mind wandering if people performing a trivially simple task either (a) have more to do, or (b) see more false alarms where they are supposed to withhold a response. They mind wandered about the same amount in both cases, but when they had more to do (ie few false alarms), they were faster at switching to a more complicated task, and their mind wandering was more unintentional and outside their willful control.
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Why is it important?
Semi-automated technology (such as self-driving cars) often have a person overseeing the process to step in and rescue the system if it is about to make a mistake (e.g. crash). The problem is that when people oversee automated systems, they often get bored while waiting for something to do and then start mind wandering. Others have proposed that maybe giving people trivial things to do will help them maintain their attention. We tested this and found it was true but in a surprising way
Perspectives
Mind wandering (e.g daydreaming) can be either intentional or unintentional (or somewhere in between). We found that mind wandering during busy but mindless action did not prevent mind wandering, but prevented it from being "high quality" mind wandering, where you think what you want and maybe get lost in your thoughts. Instead it was unenjoyable mind wandering where your mind was distracted and outside your control. This was in some ways advantageous as it reduced response time to a complicated task.
Harry Witchel
Brighton and Sussex Medical School
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Compliant activity inhibits deliberate mind wandering and accelerates thought probe responsiveness compared to compliant inactivity, September 2019, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3335082.3335115.
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