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Book Synopsis The Relationship of Mind Wandering to Working Memory and Mindfulness by :
Download or read book The Relationship of Mind Wandering to Working Memory and Mindfulness written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mind wandering, or thought unrelated to the task at hand, predicts mood in the moment more than five times better than what activity a person is doing and is implicated in clinical disorders such as depression. In addition to emotion, mind wandering predicts errors in reading comprehension and tasks requiring sustained attention. Given mind wandering's prevalence in 50% of daily life and its relevance to well-being and cognitive performance, it is worth better understanding how to regulate it. Therefore, we investigated mind wandering's correlative, causal, and mechanistic relationship to two of its potential regulators, working memory and mindfulness. In chapter 2, we investigated whether working memory solely inhibits mind wandering or instead facilitates mind wandering in a context-dependent fashion. We accomplished this by assessing whether those with greater working memory capacity reported more mind wandering specifically during undemanding tasks. In chapter 3, we explored whether mindfulness was related to decreased mind wandering by developing a behavioral measure of mindfulness - breath counting - and assessing whether it was negatively correlated with mind wandering. In chapter 4, we investigated the causal relation of mind wandering with working memory and mindfulness by assessing whether working memory training would increase working memory and thus increase mind wandering, and whether breath counting training would increase mindfulness and thus decrease mind wandering. Finally, in chapter 5, we examined whether working memory capacity reduced mind wandering by restricting it from awareness. This mechanism was investigated by assessing whether awareness of mind wandering increased when working memory was loaded and thus no longer available to restrict mind wandering from awareness. Findings suggest that working memory may facilitate mind wandering in undemanding contexts. In contrast, mindfulness may result in decreased mind wandering in the moments when it is exercised, and repeatedly exercising mindfulness through breath counting training may increase mindfulness.