Adrift in the Stream of Thought: The Effects of Mind Wandering on Executive Control and Working Memory Capacity

Abstract

Let’s start with a riddle: what are the Authors referring to? “[It] is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human mind; it makes possible planning, reasoning, problem solving, reading, and abstraction .” (Conway, Jarrold, Kane, Miyake, & Towse, 2007 , p. 3) “ This concept [of it] and its limits is a key part of human condition. […] We need [it] to in language comprehension , […] ; in arithmetic , […] ; in reasoning , […] ; and in most other types of cognitive tasks. ” (Cowan, 2005a , p. 2) If it was not for the names of the authors of the above quotes, which no doubt for majority of readers indicate unambiguously the context of “it,” one could think that they are referring to terms like consciousness, abstract thinking, or the g factor. It is even more interesting that these quotes come from first pages of multipage books, where – in accordance with the rule “from the general to the particular” – one gives basic information about one’s subject matter. However, as Nęcka (in print) felicitously says in a paper concerning this concept: “[…] for some 2,500 years of psychology as a branch of philosophy, and then for almost 100 years of its independent development […], it was not considered necessary to use [this] term .” Thus, it is a concept of equal importance in psychology as consciousness, thinking, and intelligence, but much younger.