Psychology faces a measurement crisis, and mind-wandering research is not immune. The present study explored the construct validity of probed mind-wandering reports (i.e., reports of task-unrelated thought [TUT]) with a combined experimental and individual-differences approach. We examined laboratory data from over 1000 undergraduates at two U.S. institutions, who responded to one of four different thought-probe types across two cognitive tasks. We asked a fundamental measurement question: Do different probe types yield different results, either in terms of average reports (average TUT rates, TUT-report confidence ratings), or in terms of TUT-report associations, such as TUT rate or confidence stability across tasks, or between TUT reports and other consciousness-related constructs (retrospective mind-wandering ratings, executive-control performance, and broad questionnaire trait assessments of distractibility–restlessness and positive-constructive daydreaming)? Our primary analyses compared probes that asked subjects to report on different dimensions of experience: TUT-content probes asked about what they’d been mind-wandering about, TUT-intentionality probes asked about why they were mind-wandering, and TUT-depth probes asked about the extent (on a rating scale) of their mind-wandering. Our secondary analyses compared thought-content probes that did versus didn’t offer an option to report performance-evaluative thoughts. Our findings provide some “good news”—that some mind-wandering findings are robust across probing methods—and some “bad news”—that some findings are not robust across methods and that some commonly used probing methods may not tell us what we think they do. Our results lead us to provisionally recommend content-report probes rather than intentionality- or depth-report probes for most mind-wandering research.

心理学面临测量危机，走神研究也不能幸免。本研究通过结合实验和个体差异的方法探讨了探索性走神报告（即任务无关思想报告[TUT]）的结构效度。我们检查了来自两个美国机构的 1000 多名本科生的实验室数据，他们在两项认知任务中对四种不同的思想探索类型中的一种做出了回应。我们问了一个基本的测量问题：不同的探针类型是否会产生不同的结果，无论是在平均报告（平均 TUT 率，TUT 报告置信度等级）方面，还是在 TUT 报告关联方面，例如跨任务的 TUT 率或信心稳定性，或 TUT 报告和其他与意识相关的结构（回顾性走神评级、执行控制绩效和对分心——烦躁和积极建设性白日梦的广泛问卷特征评估）？我们的主要分析比较了要求受试者报告不同维度的体验的调查：TUT 内容调查询问他们一直在走神，TUT 意向性调查询问他们为什么走神，以及 TUT 深度调查问到程度（在评级量表上）他们的思想游荡。我们的二次分析比较了提供与不提供报告绩效评估想法的选项的思想内容探测。我们的发现提供了一些“好消息”——一些走心的发现在探索方法中是稳健的——和一些“坏消息”——一些发现在不同的方法中并不稳健，一些常用的探索方法可能无法告诉我们我们的想法他们是这样。我们的结果使我们暂时推荐内容报告探针而不是意向性或深度报告探针用于大多数走神研究。