Mind-Wandering (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Mind-wandering (sometimes referred to as task unrelated thought) is the experience of thoughts not remaining on a single topic for a long period of time, particularly when people are not engaged in an attention-demanding task. It is the topic of research in the study of attention and consciousness, as it relates to attentional lapses, or digression due to lack of focus on the task in hand. Mind-wandering tends to occur during driving, reading and other activities where vigilance may be low. In these situations, people report having no memory of what happened in the surrounding environment while pre-occupied with their thoughts. This is known as the decoupling hypothesis. Studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have quantified the extent that mind-wandering reduces the cortical processing of the external environment. When thinking is not focused on the task in hand, the brain processes both task relevant and unrelated sensory information in a less detailed manner.