Resampling (Narrative) Stream of Consciousness: Mind Wandering, Inner Speech, and Reading as Reversed Introspection

Language facilitates introspection: Verbal mind-wandering has privileged access to consciousness.

Introspection and language are the cognitive prides of humankind, but their interactions in healthy cognition remain unclear. Episodes of mind-wandering, where personal thoughts often go unnoticed for some time before being introspected, offer a unique opportunity to study the role of language in introspection. In this paper, we show that inner speech facilitates awareness of mind-wandering. In...

The science of mind wandering: empirically navigating the stream of consciousness.

Conscious experience is fluid; it rarely remains on one topic for an extended period without deviation. Its dynamic nature is illustrated by the experience of mind wandering, in which attention switches from a current task to unrelated thoughts and feelings. Studies exploring the phenomenology of mind wandering highlight the importance of its content and relation to meta-cognition in determinin...

Blink durations reflect mind wandering during reading

Mind wandering is a prevalent but highly subjective phenomenon that is difficult to measure. Typically studies use probes at random points throughout at study that pop in and ask participants “Are you mind wandering” where they indicate yes or no, and then resume the study. This study investigated a method of extracting eye blinks from raw eye tracking data while participants were reading texts...

THE STRENGTH OF THE MIND : ESSAYS ON CONSCIOUSNESS & INTROSPECTION Jorge

Meditation Training Influences Mind Wandering and Mindless Reading

It is challenging for individuals to maintain their attention on ongoing cognitive tasks without being distracted by task-unrelated thought. The wandering mind is thus a considerable obstacle when attention must be maintained over time. Mental training through meditation has been proposed as an effective method of attenuating the ebb and flow of attention to thoughts and feelings that distract ...