Extended mind-wandering
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences October 5, 2022 DOI: 10.33735/phimisci.2022.9190 (opens in new tab) via Semantic Scholar
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractEveryday smartphone use is often unrelated to any specific cognitive task, a phenomenon captured in psychological research as absent-minded use or inattentiveness. The authors argue that such task-unrelated smartphone use shares many features with mind-wandering and propose the concept of 'extended mind-wandering' by integrating second-wave extended cognition theory with mind-wandering research. They suggest that this conceptual framework can accommodate the functional and phenomenological characteristics of these common cases and can enrich current work on digitally extended cognition by specifying how the attention economy influences our cognitive dynamics.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Philosophy Psychology Computer science |
| Key finding | Argues that task-unrelated smartphone use can be understood as a form of 'extended mind-wandering' by integrating extended cognition theory with mind-wandering research. |
Abstract
Smartphone use plays an increasingly important role in our daily lives. Philosophical research that has used first wave or second wave theories of extended cognition in order to understand our engagement with digital technologies has focused on the contribution of these technologies to the completion of specific cognitive tasks (e.g., remembering, reasoning, problem-solving, navigation). However, in a considerable number of cases, everyday smartphone use is task-unrelated. In psychological research, these cases have been captured by notions such as absent-minded smartphone use (Marty-Dugas et al., 2018) or smartphone-related inattentiveness (Liebherr et al., 2020). Given the prevalence of these cases, we develop a conceptual framework that can accommodate the functional and phenomenological characteristics of task-unrelated smartphone use. To this end, we will integrate research on second wave extended cognition with mind-wandering research and introduce the concept of ‘extended mind-wandering’. Elaborating the family resemblances approach to mind-wandering (Seli, Kane, Smallwood, et al., 2018), we will argue that task-unrelated smartphone use shares many characteristics with mind-wandering. We will suggest that an empirically informed conceptual analysis of cases of extended mind-wandering can enrich current work on digitally extended cognition by specifying the influence of the attention economy on our cognitive dynamics.