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25-02-2021 | Original Article

Re-examining the effect of motivation on intentional and unintentional task-unrelated thought: accounting for thought constraint produces novel results

Auteurs: Alyssa C. Smith, Nicholaus P. Brosowsky, Brandon C. W. Ralph, Daniel Smilek, Paul Seli

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 1/2022

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Abstract

It has been proposed that motivating participants to perform well on a cognitive task ought to lead to decreases in rates of intentional, but not unintentional, task-unrelated thought (TUT; a commonly studied variety of mind wandering). However, at odds with this prediction, research has found that increasing motivation results in decreases in both intentional and unintentional TUTs. One possible explanation for this surprising finding is that standard assessments of TUT may inadvertently conflate TUTs with another variety of mind wandering: unconstrained thought. If so, then deconfounding task-unrelated and unconstrained varieties of mind wandering might produce the predicted effect of a decrease in intentional, but not unintentional, TUT when motivation is increased. To explore this possibility, in the present study, participants completed a sustained-attention task after receiving standard instructions (normal-motivation condition) or instructions informing them that they could leave the study early if they achieved a certain level of performance (motivated condition). Throughout the task, we assessed rates of TUT (both intentional and unintentional) and unconstrained thoughts. Consistent with prior work, the results indicated that motivated participants reported being on-task significantly more frequently than non-motivated participants. However, unlike previous work, we found that when deconfounding TUTs and unconstrained thoughts, participants in the motivation condition reported significantly fewer bouts of intentional TUT than those in the non-motivation condition, but no differences in rates of unintentional TUT were observed between groups. These results suggest that (a) motivation specifically targets intentional TUT and (b) standard assessments of TUT conflate task-relatedness and thought constraint.
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Metagegevens
Titel
Re-examining the effect of motivation on intentional and unintentional task-unrelated thought: accounting for thought constraint produces novel results
Auteurs
Alyssa C. Smith
Nicholaus P. Brosowsky
Brandon C. W. Ralph
Daniel Smilek
Paul Seli
Publicatiedatum
25-02-2021
Uitgeverij
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in
Psychological Research / Uitgave 1/2022
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01487-5