Search Abstracts | Symposia | Slide Sessions | Poster Sessions
Why do we mind-wander when we read? Insights from reading an unfamiliar language.
Poster Session A - Sandbox Series, Thursday, October 24, 10:00 - 11:30 am, Great Hall 3 and 4
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Lidon Marin Marin1,2, Chen Chen1,2, Katya Krieger-Redwood1,2, Elizabeth Jefferies1,2; 1Department of Psychology, University of York, 2York Neuroimaging Centre
Common experience shows that it can be difficult to keep our focus on the task we want to be engaged with - for example, when trying to get some work done in a café, we might get distracted by overhearing a conversation near us, and its content might elicit our own personal thoughts that also distract us from work. However, the extent to which we get distracted depends on several factors – e.g., if the conversation is in a language that is not familiar for us, it will probably be less distracting. The phenomenon of drifting attention away from task-related information to task-unrelated thoughts is called mind-wandering, and not many studies have investigated its neural correlates yet. Previous evidence suggests that the default mode network (DMN) may be especially relevant for mind-wandering when reading: it has been shown to be more decoupled from medial visual regions in participants who mind-wander more frequently when reading (1) and to be more functionally coupled to visual cortex when focus is stronger for the task, i.e., there is less mind-wandering (2). However, to the best of our knowledge, the neural basis of mind-wandering when reading has never been explored using linguistic stimuli in languages that are non-native or unfamiliar for participants. We have recently started an investigation – acquisition of functional MRI is still ongoing – inspired in the procedure used in a previous study (2). Specifically, we ask participants either to engage with personal thoughts (elicited by a thought-probe such as ‘Easter holiday’) while ignoring sentences on the screen (“recall” condition); or to suppress personal thoughts while engaging with the sentences on-screen (“comprehend” condition). After each sentence’s presentation, we ask participants to rate their focus on the corresponding task. Sentences are written in English (native language of our participants) or Spanish (non-native, unfamiliar language with the same alphabet). We hypothesise that semantic engagement drives distraction because personal thoughts and language processing both require this resource. We also hypothesise that familiar language inputs access meaning more automatically than unfamiliar language, even if both languages share alphabet and cognates are present. Therefore, we expect less mind-wandering when reading sentences while trying to ignore personal thoughts in English than in Spanish; but more mind-wandering when engaging with personal thoughts while trying to ignore sentences in English as compared to Spanish. Based on previous evidence (1,2), we expect the DMN to be more coupled with visual regions when engaging with reading sentences and successfully ignoring personal thoughts, and more decoupled when mind-wandering while trying to read sentences. We also expect the anterior temporal lobe to be decoupled from visual input and coupled with the core DMN when successfully engaging with personal thoughts and ignoring sentences, but to show the opposite pattern when getting distracted from personal thoughts by on-screen sentences. Our investigation will further contribute to unveiling the neural mechanisms of mind-wandering. It is also especially relevant in the context of a multilingual world and could have potential implications for language learning and communication practices.
Topic Areas: Reading, Multilingualism