Abstract

The goal of this study was to examine how various degrees of perceptual decoupling during mind wandering affect fine motor control. We hypothesized that while under normal circumstances attention ensures an optimal control strategy that leads to accurate motor performance, during mind wandering the process becomes disrupted. In this study, we conducted a computer-based experiment with a tracking task. During mind wandering, motor movements were more erratic and less variable, indicative of reduced attentiveness to the continuous demands of the external task. Importantly, the deeper the reported mind wandering, the less accurate and less variable were the mouse movements, suggesting that perceptual decoupling may take place in a graded rather than in an all or nothing manner. Greater movement intermittency was associated with higher tracking accuracy, suggesting that more corrective movements toward a moving target were functional to task performance. Moreover, greater variance in velocity was negatively correlated with tracking accuracy. These findings suggest that periods of inattention to the task have a negative impact on fine motor movement control by making behavior unpredictable, providing support for the idea that there is a decoupling of sensory-motor processes during mind wandering.

摘要

本研究的目的是研究在走神期间不同程度的知觉脱钩如何影响精细运动控制。我们假设，虽然在正常情况下注意力可确保最佳控制策略，从而导致准确的运动性能，但在思维游荡期间，该过程会被打乱。在这项研究中，我们进行了一项基于计算机的跟踪任务实验。在走神期间，运动动作更加不稳定且变化较小，表明对外部任务的持续需求的注意力降低。重要的是，报告的走神越深，鼠标移动的准确性和可变性就越低，这表明感知解耦可能以分级而不是全有或全无的方式发生。更大的运动间歇性与更高的跟踪精度相关，这表明朝着移动目标进行更多纠正性运动对任务绩效有帮助。此外，更大的速度变化与跟踪精度呈负相关。这些研究结果表明，对任务的注意力不集中通过使行为不可预测对精细运动运动控制产生负面影响，这为在走神期间感觉运动过程脱钩的观点提供了支持。