The locomotor patterns typical of wandering behaviour were studied electromyographically in abdominal segments of freely moving larvae of Manduca sexta. Crawling locomotion consisted of stereotyped, anteriorly-directed, peristaltic waves of intersegmental muscle contraction. During burrowing the intersegmental muscles of all abdominal segments contracted simultaneously for several consecutive c...

Re-reading has been shown to have a minimal benefit on text comprehension, in comparison to reading only once or other types of study techniques (e.g., testing; self-explanation). In two experiments we examined the effect of re-reading on mind wandering. Participants read two texts, during which they responded to intermittent mind wandering probes. One text was read once and the other twice. Co...

The present study investigated whether the frequency of probe-caught mind wandering varied by condition and had any impact on performance in both an item-by-item reading aloud task and a blocked version of the classic Stroop task. Across both experiments, mind wandering rates were found to be quite high and were negatively associated with vocal onset latencies and error rates across conditions....

In an experience-sampling study that bridged laboratory, ecological, and individual-differences approaches to mind-wandering research, 72 subjects completed an executive-control task with periodic thought probes (reported by McVay & Kane, 2009) and then carried PDAs for a week that signaled them eight times daily to report immediately whether their thoughts were off task. Subjects who reported ...

is a common problem in long-term care. However, in the design of interventions, the emphasis is on safety, and little consideration has been given to the meaning of the behavior for the person who wanders. This paper uses the Need-driven Dementiacompromised Behavior (NDB) model to demonstrate that the expression of wandering is unique to a given person in a particular context or situation. Elem...

Wandering spleen is a rare condition, characterized by a mobile spleen that is attached only by an elongated vascular pedicle, allowing it to migrate to any part of the abdomen or pelvis. Mesenteroaxial gastric volvulus usually occurs in children and may be associated with wandering spleen. Both entities result from abnormal laxity or absence of the peritoneal attachments due to abnormal fusion...

Given the negative effects of mind wandering on performance, it may be profitable to be aware of task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) as they occur. The present study investigated whether motivating people to catch TUTs increases meta-awareness. We offered incentives for increased self-catching during reading. To enhance the veracity of these self-reports, we used a "bogus-pipeline" procedure; we con...

Alcohol consumption alters consciousness in ways that make drinking both alluring and hazardous. Recent advances in the study of consciousness using a mind-wandering paradigm permit a rigorous examination of the effects of alcohol on experiential consciousness and metaconsciousness. Fifty-four male social drinkers consumed alcohol (0.82 g/kg) or a placebo beverage and then performed a mind-wand...

This paper reports a wandering weekday effect: the pattern of day seasonality in stock market returns is not fixed, as assumed in the Monday or weekend effects, but changes over time. Analysing daily closing prices in eleven major stock markets during 1993–2007, our results show that the wandering weekday is not conditional on average returns in the previous week (the ‘‘twist” in the Monday eff...

Let K be a number field, let φ(x) ∈ K(x) be a rational function of degree d > 1, and let α ∈ K be a wandering point such that φ(α) = 0 for all n > 0. We prove that if the abc-conjecture holds for K, then for all but finitely many positive integers n, there is a prime p of K such that vp(φ (α)) > 0 and vp(φ (α)) 0 for all positive integers m < n. Under appropriate ramification hypotheses, we can...