![\"Bored-Britney-Spears-Class-Fidget-Fidgeting-Boring-Nothing-to-do-School-sucks-GIF\"](\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/files\/2014\/11\/Bored-Britney-Spears-Class-Fidget-Fidgeting-Boring-Nothing-to-do-School-sucks-GIF.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWe\u2019ve all been there. We all find our minds wandering off from time-to-time, and we\u2019ve all experienced that feeling where your leg starts shaking, fingers start tapping, and you just can\u2019t seem to sit still and focus on the task at hand.<\/p>\n
It makes sense that if your mind is elsewhere, your performance on the current task will be largely inhibited, but why is it that the deeper we fall into this trance, the less control we have over bodily movements too? What is the connection between this occurrence of motor and mental restlessness\u2014that is, how do fidgeting and mind wandering relate?<\/p>\n
\u00a0A recent study looked for answers to these questions. Researchers sought to uncover why and how mind wandering and fidgeting relate to one another. Standing accounts of mind wandering already agreed that primary-task performance suffers as a result of mind wandering, but Seli et al. believed that the effect should be similar with regard to secondary-task performance as well.<\/p>\n
So, in a pair of studies, participants were asked to engage in two tasks. The primary task was a metronome response task (MRT), in which they were asked to press a button in synchrony with tones. Their secondary task was simply to sit still. The first study just looked at the basic relationship between mind wandering and the occurrence of fidgeting, and the second study looked at the effects of the degree to which the mind wandered.<\/p>\n
They found that mind wandering is associated with decline in performance of both primary and secondary tasks, and that the degree of this effect may be dependent on the depth of mind wandering.<\/p>\n
Attentional resources and executive control are central to the explanation of the findings here. The capacity theory of attention posits that attention is a limited resource to be allocated proportionally across tasks. So, say you are trying to do homework and watch television simultaneously. Watching TV uses up some of your attentional resources, leaving fewer available to devote to homework; as a result, the efficiency with which you are able to perform the task is reduced. This is basically what Seli et al. tried to get at in this article. The idea is that when the mind wanders, executive-control resources that should be allocated to task-related goals are taken up, so both primary and secondary task performance suffers because there simply wouldn’t be enough attentional resources available to fully perform the tasks.<\/p>\n
Executive control is an important facet of attention, central to task completion. It is what allows us to direct our attention toward one thing or away from another. The MRT primary task likely requires a lot of executive resources, while sitting still would require relatively less, as it is a more automatic process.<\/p>\n
A wandering mind signifies loss of executive control toward task-related goals. So, lower levels of mind wandering have a negative impact on MRT performance due to a lack of resources available for the demanding primary task. Under this condition, however, the ability to sit still would not be impacted to the same extent, because executive resources are allocated to the less demanding task. But, in states of deep mind wandering, both primary and secondary task performance declines. Enough executive resources are diverted away from task-related goals in this case that the resource requirements for sitting still can\u2019t even be satisfied; thus, fidgeting increases with increased levels of mind wandering.<\/p>\n
This study highlights the importance of executive control in task performance. They\u2019ve taken a new perspective on mind wandering and opened up a new pathway for understanding resulting behavioral changes. The correlation between mind wandering and the occurrence of fidgeting suggests that the effects of mind wandering can span beyond just primary-task goals. So, next time you\u2019re in class and your mind gets away from you, it may not just be your notes that take the hit.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Seli, P., Carriere, J. S. A., Thomson, D. R., Cheyne, J. A., Ehgoetz Martens, K. A., & Smilek, D. (2013). Restless mind, restless body. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40<\/em>, 660-668.<\/p>\n