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Mind-wandering (sometimes referred to as task-unrelated thought) is the experience of thoughts not remaining on a single topic for a long period of time, particularly when people are not engaged in an attention-demanding task.〔 Mind-wandering tends to occur during driving, reading and other activities where vigilance may be low. In these situations, people do not remember what happened in the surrounding environment because they are pre-occupied with their thoughts. This is known as the decoupling hypothesis. Studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have quantified the extent that mind-wandering reduces the cortical processing of the external environment. When thoughts are unrelated to the task at hand, the brain processes both task relevant and unrelated sensory information in a less detailed manner. Mind-wandering appears to be a stable trait of people and a transient state. Studies have linked performance problems in the laboratory and in daily life. Mind-wandering has been associated with possible car accidents. Mind-wandering is also intimately linked to states of affect. Studies indicate that task-unrelated thoughts are common in people with low or depressed mood. Mind-wandering also occurs when a person is intoxicated via the consumption of alcohol. It is common during mind-wandering to engage in mental time travel or the consideration of personally relevant events from the past and the anticipation of events in the future. Poet Joseph Brodsky described it as a “psychological Sahara,” a cognitive desert “that starts right in your bedroom and spurns the horizon.” The hands of the clock seem to stop; the stream of consciousness slows to a drip. We want to be anywhere but here.〔( Lehrer, Jonah The Importance of Mind-wandering )〕 Studies have demonstrated a prospective bias to spontaneous thought because individuals tend to engage in more future than past related thoughts during mind-wandering. ==History== The history of mind wandering research dates back to 18th century England. British philosophers struggled to determine whether mind-wandering occurred in the mind or if an outside source caused it. In 1921, Varendonck published ''The Psychology of Day-Dreams'', in which he traced his "trains of thoughts' to identify their origins, most often irrelevant external influences."〔Varendonck, J. 1921, ''The Psychology of Day-Dreams'' London:Allen & Unwin〕 Wallas (1926) considered mind-wandering as an important aspect of his second stage of creative thought - incubation.〔Wallas,G. 1926, ''The Art of Thought''London:Johnathon Cape〕 It wasn’t until the 1960s that the first documented studies were conducted on mind wandering. John Antrobus and Jerome Singer developed a questionnaire and discussed the experience of mind wandering. This questionnaire, known as the Imaginal Processes Inventory (IPI), provides a trait measure of mind wandering and it assesses the experience on three dimensions: how vivid the persons thoughts are, how many of those thoughts are guilt or fear based, and how deep into the thought a person goes. As technology continues to develop, psychologists are starting to use Functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe mind wandering in the brain and reduce psychologists reliance on verbal reports.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mind-wandering」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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