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The effects of posture on mind wandering

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Abstract

Using a reading comprehension task, we explored whether body postures would influence mind wandering, a universal internally self-generated activity. Specifically, participants were instructed to perform a reading comprehension task under three postural conditions (lying supine, sitting, and standing upright). Probe-caught technique with prompts presented at irregular intervals was adapted to measure the frequency of mind wandering. Self-caught method was used to measure the meta-awareness of mind wandering by self-reports. Results indicated that the radio of mind wandering was significantly greater in lying than standing and sitting, but the meta-awareness of it was not different among three postures. Moreover, the reading performance, an indirect indicator of executive control, decreased in lying compared to standing and sitting. We suggested that the increase of mind wandering in lying posture may due to the dysfunction of executive control, which also results in the redistribution of cognitive resources. Suggestions for future research are proposed.

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Data availability

Data are available as supplemental materials attached to the paper.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the volunteers who participated in this study.

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 31371039).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Xinrui Yang, Binbin Qian, Lu Wang & Zhijun Zhang

  2. The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China

    Xinqi Zhou

  3. School of Education and Psychology, Southwest Minzu University, Chengdu, China

    Yajun Zhao

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  1. Xinrui Yang
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  2. Binbin Qian
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  3. Xinqi Zhou
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  4. Yajun Zhao
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  5. Lu Wang
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  6. Zhijun Zhang
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Contributions

Conceptualization: XY, XZ, ZZ; Methodology: XY; Formal analysis and investigation: XY, XZ, YZ; Writing—original draft preparation: XY, BQ, YZ, LW; Writing—review and editing: BQ, ZZ; Supervision: ZZ.

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Correspondence to Zhijun Zhang.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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All procedures followed were approved by the institutional review board at the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences (Zhejiang University) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and its later amendments.

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Informed consent was obtained from all the participants for inclusion in the study.

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Yang, X., Qian, B., Zhou, X. et al. The effects of posture on mind wandering. Psychological Research 86, 737–745 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01531-4

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