{"pk":28848,"title":"Tracking the wandering mind: Memory, mouse movementsand decision making styles","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Mind wandering involves internally focused attention, and isoften conceptualized as the opposite of external attention thatis oriented towards the task at hand. Individuals vary ac-cording to the amount they mind wander as well as with re-gards to the pattern of oscillations between mind wanderingthoughts and externally directed, focused thought. Assumingthat mind wandering is influenced by episodic contents, we ex-plore the proposition that mind wandering frequency is relatedto the manner in which individuals deal with the contents ofepisodic memory, as reflected by a maximizing decision mak-ing style. Based on previous studies measuring cognitive pro-cesses, we assume that mouse trajectories towards a particu-lar response on the screen are continuously updated by time-dependent and temporally-dynamic cognitive processes. Asa behavioral methodology, mouse tracking provides potentialcues to help predict mind wandering. In our experiment, a to-tal of 274 students completed a decision making questionnaire,episodic and associative memory tests (during which mousemovements were recorded) and a working memory task, dur-ing which mind wandering thoughts were assessed. We foundcertain mouse movement characteristics to be significantly pre-dictive of mind wandering. Also, a maximizing decision mak-ing style appeared to be related to a particular type of mindwandering, namely, task-related interference.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"mind wandering; episodic memory; mouse-tracking; decisionmaking; maximizing"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bq4q6w3","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Mariana","middle_name":"Rachel","last_name":"Dias da Silva","name_suffix":"","institution":"Tilburg University","department":""},{"first_name":"Marie","middle_name":"","last_name":"Postma","name_suffix":"","institution":"Tilburg University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T10:00:00-08:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28848/galley/18719/download/"}]}