Insights into the time course of mind wandering during task execution

Our minds tend to wander, sometimes with little control. Despite this phenomenon, that can affect our ability to perform everyday tasks gaining much interest, relatively little is understood about the actual time course of MW across an experimental task. With this in mind, we collated data from two previously reported studies investigating the effect of auditory beat stimulation on MW. Taking experience sampling probes intermittently dispersed throughout a sustained-attention-to-response task (SART), we re-evaluated responses to theta monaural beat stimulation, as well as to two control conditions (silence (headphones only) and a sine wave control tone). The experience sampling probes were binned into shorter intervals of approximately five minutes duration, chronologically as they appeared within the paradigm. Experience sampling probes assayed whether MW had occurred, with or without meta-awareness, and lastly in which temporal orientation (past/present/future). By applying this somewhat temporally better resolved approach, we were able to examine the time course of attentional fluctuations related to MW during the execution of the SART, as well as interactions arising from the auditory beat stimulation. As anticipated, MW increased during task execution, most prominently at the beginning of the experiment. We also observed that levels of meta-awareness declined over time. Moreover, the temporal evolution of meta-awareness and past-orientation appeared to depend on the stimulation condition. These data demonstrate that time-on-task is a crucial factor in measuring MW, during the performance of an attentional task.