Lapses in Attention and Mind-Wandering are Related but Distinct Constructs

Post by Shireen Parimoo

The takeaway

Lapses in attention are more common in people who are prone to boredom, have poor attentional control, and a tendency to let their mind wander. Mind-wandering, on the other hand, is more strongly related to low motivation and alertness, as well as personality traits like conscientiousness and neuroticism.

What's the science?

We have all experienced days at work where we find it challenging to stay focused on the simplest of tasks. Lapses of attention can occur when we are disengaged from a task or when we let our mind wander, often negatively impacting our performance. The degree to which different causes of attentional lapses are related to each other, as well as to other cognitive abilities and personality traits is unclear. This week in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Unsworth and colleagues used latent variable analysis techniques to investigate the underlying causes of lapses in attention and whether individual differences might make some people more prone to experiencing attentional lapses than others.

How did they do it?

Participants were 358 young adults who completed a battery of cognitive tasks that assessed their working memory capacity (e.g., reading span), attentional control abilities (e.g., anti-saccade task), and lapses in attention (e.g., sustained attention to response task – SART). Participants also rated the degree to which they experienced task-unrelated mind-wandering by responding to infrequently presented thought probes during some of the tasks, as well as their level of motivation and alertness. Lastly, they filled out a series of self-report questionnaires assessing aspects of their personality (Big Five Inventory), proneness to boredom, daily cognitive failures including lapses in attention and memory, and sleep habits.

The authors first performed confirmatory factor analyses in which all the measures from the lapses of attention tasks were hypothesized to load onto a single latent factor (i.e., the construct of lapses in attention). In subsequent analyses, they tested whether the lapses of attention measures loaded onto the same factor as mind-wandering thoughts and attentional control or whether those were separable constructs. They then tested how all the cognitive factors were related to each other and to the questionnaire measures. Finally, the authors used structural equation modeling to determine which of the self-reported measures and cognitive factors uniquely contributed to (i) in-lab lapses in attention, (ii) daily cognitive failures, and (ii) task-unrelated mind-wandering, after accounting for the shared contribution of the remaining variables.

What did they find?

Behavioral measures of in-lab attentional lapses loaded onto a single latent factor, which means that those measures do arise from lapses in attention. Importantly, the factor of lapses in attention was distinct from both mind-wandering and attentional control, despite being correlated with them. Reduced attentional control and greater mind-wandering contributed to increased lapses in attention. Moreover, those who were more prone to boredom and lapses in attention in their daily lives were also more likely to experience greater lapses in attention on the cognitive tasks in the lab. In contrast, none of the cognitive factors predicted daily cognitive failures, only boredom proneness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. These findings demonstrate that although in-lab lapses in attention are associated with boredom proneness, cognitive abilities, and everyday cognitive failures, everyday cognitive failures are primarily driven by personality traits.

Mind-wandering was not only distinct from lapses in attention but also showed a different pattern of correlations with other variables. For example, mind-wandering was associated with greater neuroticism and lower conscientiousness, whereas these personality traits were not related to lapses in attention. Compared to lapses in attention, mind-wandering was weakly related to attentional control and working memory but more strongly correlated with motivation and alertness. Lastly, greater lapses in attention, greater attentional control, and low alertness predicted greater mind-wandering. Thus, cognitive variables and personality traits differentially contribute to every day and in-lab lapses in attention and mind-wandering.

What's the impact?

This study found that lapses in attention and mind-wandering are related but separate constructs that arise from a distinct combination of cognitive abilities and personality traits. These findings provide greater insight into the different reasons why people have difficulty focusing on tasks and pave the way for developing effective interventions for improving task focus and performance.

Access the original scientific publication here.

P.S. This post is a part of our new BrainPost Behavior series. For more posts like this check out BrainPost Behavior.