4.4 Article

Segmenting the stream of consciousness: The psychological correlates of temporal structures in the time series data of a continuous performance task

Journal

BRAIN AND COGNITION
Volume 66, Issue 1, Pages 50-56

Publisher

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2007.05.004

Keywords

mind wandering; attentional lapses; task unrelated thought; stimulus independent thought; sustained attention and response time

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Using principal component analysis, we examined whether structural properties in the time series of response time would identify different mental states during a continuous performance task. We examined whether it was possible to identify regular patterns which were present in blocks classified as lacking controlled processing, either behaviourally (as a failure to withhold a response to a target) or subjectively (as an off task report at a thought probe). Principal component analysis identified three components present in response times accounting for 58.8% of the variance in the data. Of these components, the second largest factor showed two features that implied it was a marker for mind wande\ring. First, it was stronger under slow relative to fast stimulus presentation conditions, and so paralleled the distribution of mind wandering reports. Second, it was more powerful prior to behaviour markers of mind wandering (failures in response inhibition) and less powerful prior to reports of task focused thinking (on task reports). Taken together, the use of principal components analysis on response times seem a viable tool for differentiating different mental states and so could help identify the neural substrates which underpin mind wandering and other subjective states. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.4
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available