Does mind wandering reflect executive function or executive failure? Comment on Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008).
Jennifer C McVay, Michael J. Kane
Psychological Bulletin March 1, 2010 DOI: 10.1037/a0018298 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Commentary Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Humans Goals Internal-external control Mental processes Consciousness Cues Thinking Attention Executive function |
| Key points | Argues that mind wandering represents a failure of executive control rather than a recruitment of executive resources, as Smallwood and Schooler claimed. The authors propose that mind wandering is dually determined by automatically generated thoughts in response to environmental and mental cues and by the executive-control system's ability to deal with this interference, citing experimental, neuroimaging, and individual-differences evidence. |
Abstract
In this comment, we contrast different conceptions of mind wandering that were presented in 2 recent theoretical reviews: Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). We also introduce a new perspective on the role of executive control in mind wandering by integrating empirical evidence presented in Smallwood and Schooler with 2 theoretical frameworks: Watkins's elaborated control theory and Klinger's (1971, 2009) current concerns theory. In contrast to the Smallwood-Schooler claim that mind wandering recruits executive resources, we argue that mind wandering represents a failure of executive control and that it is dually determined by the presence of automatically generated thoughts in response to environmental and mental cues and the ability of the executive-control system to deal with this interference. We present empirical support for this view from experimental, neuroimaging, and individual-differences research.
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- Why the global availability of mind wandering necessitates resource competition: Reply to McVay and Kane (2010). Psychological Bulletin March 1, 2010
- The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy. Frontiers in Psychology 2013
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Cites 6
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- Task unrelated thought: the role of distributed processing. Consciousness and Cognition June 2003
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