The Web address of this article is
https://sfhelp.org/gwc/news/defocusing.htm
Updated
April 11, 2015
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This article focuses on
the common phenomenon of "mind
wandering" and
"defocusing." See my
comments at the end.
The hyperlinks and
hilights below are mine.
Researchers are studying
a pervasive
psychological phenomenon
in which "Oh man we've
got to finish doing the
taxes this weekend..."
C'mon, admit it. Your
train of thought has
derailed like that many
times. It's just
mind-wandering. We all
do it, and surprisingly
often, whether we're
struggling to avoid it
or not.
Mainstream psychology
hasn't paid much
attention to this common
mental habit. But a
spate of new studies is
chipping away at its
mysteries and scientists
say the topic is
beginning to gain
visibility.
Someday, such research
may turn up ways to help
students keep their
focus on textbooks and
lectures, and drivers to
keep their minds on the
road. It may reveal ways
to reap payoffs from the
habit.
And it might shed light
on
attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder
which can include an
unusually severe
inability to focus that
causes trouble in
multiple areas of life.
More generally,
scientists say,
mind-wandering is worth
studying because it's
just too common to
ignore.
Michael Kane, a
psychologist at the
University of North
Carolina at Greensboro,
sampled the thoughts of
students at eight random
times a day for a week.
He found that on
average, they were not
thinking about what they
were doing 30 percent of
the time.
For some students it was
between 80 and 90
percent of the time. Out
of the 126 participants,
only one denied any
mind-wandering at the
sampled moments.
Prior work has also
turned up average rates
of 30 percent to 40
percent in everyday
life.
"If you want to
understand people's
mental lives, this is a
phenomenon we ought to
be thinking about," Kane
said.
Of course, a lot of
mind-wandering is
harmless, as when you
think about a work
problem while munching a
cheeseburger. The
problem comes when it
distracts you from
something you should be
paying attention to.
The result of that can
be tragic. Kane noted
the 2003 case of a
college professor who
drove to work in Irvine,
Calif., one hot August
day, parked and went to
his office. Whatever was
going through his mind,
he'd lost track of the
fact that his
10-month-old son was in
the back seat. The boy
died in the heat. In
2004, virtually the same
thing happened in Santa
Ana, Calif.
A more common task that
demands concentration is
reading. Even here,
people's minds wander 15
to 20 percent of the
time, said Jonathan
Schooler of the
University of British
Columbia in Vancouver,
Canada. And they often
don't realize it, he
said.
He and colleagues had
college students read
passages from "War and
Peace" and other books.
The volunteers pushed a
button every time they
noticed their thoughts
straying, and that
happened regularly,
Schooler said.
But more surprisingly in
such experiments, when
the volunteers are
interrupted at random
times and asked what
they're thinking, "we
regularly catch people's
minds wandering before
they've noticed it
themselves," Schooler
said. And these stealth
episodes appear to
hamper reading
comprehension, he said.
In Kane's study,
scheduled for
publication later this
year, volunteers carried
devices that beeped at
random times and asked
questions about their
thoughts. Most of the
time when caught
mind-wandering, the
students said they'd
deliberately stopped
focusing on what they
were doing.
Their wandering thoughts
trained more on everyday
things than on
fantasies, and much more
than on worries. That's
similar to what previous
studies have found. "A
lot of what they're
reporting is ... mental
to-do lists," Kane said.
But what leads to this?
"The mind is always
trying to wander, every
chance it gets,"
Schooler said. In his
view, the mind has not
only the goal of
achieving whatever task
we're focused on, but
also personal goals
simmering outside of our
immediate awareness.
These are things like
making plans for the
future, working out
everyday problems, and
better understanding
oneself. Sometimes, one
of these goals hijacks
our attention. And so
our mind wanders.
Brain-scanning evidence
links mind-wandering to
basic operation of the
brain. Malia Mason of
Harvard's Massachusetts
General Hospital and
colleagues recently
reported that mind-wandering taps into
the same circuitry that
people use when they're
told to do nothing —
when their brains are on
"idle."
Schooler, who's studying
brain-wave activity
associated with mind
wandering, welcomes what
he sees as a surge of
interest in the topic.
He and others say
there's plenty to learn.
One goal is finding ways
to help people realize
when their mind is
wandering and bring it
under control, Schooler
said. He plans to test
whether meditation
training might help.
But there's even a more
basic question, he said.
Why is the brain wired
to wander? What could
possibly be good about
that?
"Mind-wandering is
probably more often
helpful than harmful,"
Kane said. For one
thing, the cost is low:
despite notable
exceptions, life usually
doesn't demand our full
attention.
"A lot of human daily
life is autopilot," he
said. "There's a whole
lot of what we need to
do that we can do
without thinking about
it, from driving to
eating .... We do
occasionally miss that
turn on the way home,
but we get through the
day pretty well."
Given that, a mechanism
that encourages us to
devote some idle brain
capacity to planning and
solving problems "seems
like a pretty good use
of time," he said.
Schooler is exploring
the idea that
mind-wandering promotes
creativity. "It's
unconstrained, it can go
anywhere, which is sort
of the perfect situation
for creative thought,"
he said.
Mason points out that
just because the human
brain wanders doesn't
necessarily mean there's
a good reason for it.
Maybe, she said, the
mind wanders simply
because it can.
But even she sees an
upside.
"I can be stuck in my
car in traffic and not
go absolutely crazy
because I'm not stuck in
the here and now," she
said. "I can think about
what happened last
night. And that's
great."
This brief YouTube video proposes an effective way to improve focusing and
reduce "mind
chatter": The fideo mentions eight self-improvement lessons in this Web
site: I've reduced that to seven.
The main
value of this Yahoo news article is
to focus your awareness
on your normal mental
awareness - or lack of
it The article
says
mind-wandering ("defocusing") is
commonplace;
psychologists haven't paid much attention to
it;
it is usually harmless, but potentially
dangerous; and...
little is known as to why and how it
happens.
The article
doesn't present any research findings on...
how thoughts
form, and what determines our current mental focus;
whether
self-awareness is useful, and if it is, how to improve it;
what can
hinder self-awareness,
mental
repression ("I don't want to think about doing the taxes.")
the
difference between conscious and unconscious thoughts;
the
relationship between "personality" and "thinking;" and
why some
people can focus better than others.
Premise - normal human personalities are composed of a number of
interactive
''subselves,'' or
"parts." Each has it's own talents, limitations,
goals, and function. Our subselves are discrete regions of our brain.
Subselves
create our thoughts and influence our emotions and bodily functions in ways
we don't understand.
This concept helps to explain "mind wandering": one subself focuses on a goal
or subject, and then another subself activates and causes a different
thought-focus. This happens dynamically and below the awareness of the host
person. Several subselves "thinking" at once can cause mental confusion and
stressful "mind racing." Most (all?) people have an
executive subself that can manage other subselves and get them to let one "think" (focus) at a
time.
My clinical experience as an
''inner-family system'' therapist since 1992 is
that anyone can learn to identify and be aware of their subselves, and can
retrain them to follow their true Self to stay focused when circumstances require that.
Lesson 1 in
this Web site explains how to do this.
Pause, breathe, and reflect - why did you read this article? Did you get
what you needed? If not, what
do you need? Who's
answering these questions - your
true Self, or
''someone else''?
The Web address of this article is
https://sfhelp.org/gwc/news/defocusing.htm
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