An Exploration of Mind Wandering using Probes and Memories Evoked during Reading Fiction

Abstract

Mind wandering is an everyday phenomenon that has garnered considerable attention in the past decades. It refers to the direction of attention away from the task at hand, resulting in what is termed decoupling. The mind could wander into the past or the future, or stay in the present moment without wandering. Mind wandering elicits memories, especially when reading a book of fiction. The most commonly used method of measuring mind wandering is the probe-caught method. It is a direct and subjective method as against indirect and objective methods that may involve physiological measures. In this study, the researcher conducted a survey on bookstore owners and librarians across the city of Bangalore. The aim of the survey was to be able to decide upon a book of fiction in an objective manner and to make an unbiased decision about the selection of the same, so that it could be used as the basis for a reading experiment for young adults aged between 18 and 21 years. American young adult fiction author John Green and his book entitled “Turtles All The Way Down” received the highest number of mentions and hence it was chosen. Although the actual reading of the text was 30 minutes, the duration of the entire experiment was greater than 30 minutes, owing to periodical interruptions approximately every minute, with the objective of probing the subjects’ internal trains of thought while they engaged in reading. For recording, the researcher used an audio recorder, after which the verbal reports of the subjects were transcribed. The conclusions arrived at through content analysis revealed the fact that for all the subjects, the mental content was about the past or related to aspects in the present. Content referring to the future was absent among all subjects. In short, amongst other areas, the study finds key implications in the broad area covering the intersection of behavioural sciences and literature.