Although mind‐wandering research is rapidly progressing, stark disagreements are emerging about what the term “mind‐wandering” means. Four prominent views define mind‐wandering as (a) task‐unrelated thought, (b) stimulus‐independent thought, (c) unintentional thought, or (d) dynamically unguided thought. Although theorists claim to capture the ordinary understanding of mind‐wandering, no systematic studies have assessed these claims. Two large factorial studies present participants (N = 545) with vignettes that describe someone's thoughts and ask whether her mind was wandering, while systematically manipulating features relevant to the four major accounts of mind‐wandering. Dynamics explains between four and 40 times more variance in participants' mind‐wandering judgments than other features. Our third study (N = 153) tests and supports a unique prediction of the dynamic framework—obsessive rumination contrasts with mind‐wandering. Our final study (N = 277) used vignettes that resemble mind‐wandering experiments. Dynamics had significant and large effects, while task‐unrelatedness was nonsignificant. These results strongly suggest that the central feature of mind‐wandering is its dynamics.

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“走心”对民间意味着什么？实证调查

尽管走神的研究进展迅速，但关于“走神”一词的含义出现了明显的分歧。四种突出的观点将走神定义为（a）与任务无关的思想，（b）与刺激无关的思想，（c）无意识的思想，或（d）动态无指导的思想。尽管理论家声称掌握了对走神的普通理解，但没有系统研究评估过这些主张。两项大型析因研究向参与者 ( N  = 545) 展示了描述某人思想的小插曲，并询问她的思想是否在走神，同时系统地处理与走神的四个主要解释相关的特征。动力学解释了参与者走神判断的差异是其他特征的 4 到 40 倍。N  = 153) 测试并支持对动态框架的独特预测——强迫性沉思与走神形成对比。我们的最终研究 ( N  = 277) 使用了类似于走神实验的小插曲。动态具有显着且大的影响，而与任务无关的影响不显着。这些结果有力地表明，走神的核心特征是它的动态。