Neuroimage
December 20, 2012
Jonathan Smallwood, Christine M. Tipper, Kevin Brown et al.
145 citations
Cognition that is not based on perception can lead to at least two different outcomes. In some situations, cognition that is independent of perception can allow actions to be selected other than those prescribed by immediate perceptual input. In others, cognition can be independent of perception and unrelated to the current behavioral goal allowing thoughts to develop that are largely...
PLoS One
April 6, 2012
Jonathan Smallwood, Kevin Brown, Benjamin Baird et al.
92 citations
Although consciousness can be brought to bear on both perceptual and internally generated information, little is known about how these different cognitive modes are coordinated. Here we show that between-participant variance in thoughts unrelated to the task being performed (known as task unrelated thought, TUT) is associated with longer response times (RT) when target presentation occurs...
Emotion
February 6, 2012
Michael D. Mrazek, Jonathan Smallwood, Jonathan W. Schooler
604 citations
Research into both mindfulness and mind-wandering has grown rapidly, yet clarification of the relationship between these two seemingly opposing constructs is still absent. A first study addresses the relationship between a dispositional measure of mindfulness (Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale, MAAS) and converging measures of both self-reported and indirect markers of mind-wandering....
Brain Research
April 15, 2011
Jonathan Smallwood, Kevin Brown, Ben Baird et al.
394 citations
The ability to generate and sustain an internal train of thought unrelated to external reality frees an agent from the constraints of only acting on immediate, environmentally triggered events. The current paper proposes that such thought is produced through cooperation between autobiographical information provided by the default mode network and a frontal-parietal control network which helps...
Psychological Bulletin
March 1, 2010
Jonathan Smallwood
173 citations
When the mind wanders, conscious thoughts come to mind that are only loosely related to the task being performed. This phenomenon produces tension within the cognitive sciences because the interfering nature of these thoughts is at odds with the assumption that such processes are functional in daily life. In their comment, McVay and Kane (2010) suggested that failures in executive control can...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
May 26, 2009
Kalina Christoff, Alan M Gordon, Jonathan Smallwood et al.
1,832 citations
Although mind wandering occupies a large proportion of our waking life, its neural basis and relation to ongoing behavior remain controversial. We report an fMRI study that used experience sampling to provide an online measure of mind wandering during a concurrent task. Analyses focused on the interval of time immediately preceding experience sampling probes demonstrate activation of default...
Brain and Cognition
February 1, 2008
Jonathan Smallwood, Merrill McSpadden, Bryan Luus et al.
Using principal component analysis, we examined whether structural properties in the time series of response time would identify different mental states during a continuous performance task. We examined whether it was possible to identify regular patterns which were present in blocks classified as lacking controlled processing, either behaviourally (as a failure to withhold a response to a...