Worry Is More Associated With Deliberate Mind Wandering Process than Unintentional Mind Wandering Process

Abstract

This study did an examination of whether there was an association between worrying and mind wandering and whether deliberate mind wandering and worrying are more associated as compared to unintentional mind wandering and worrying. Mind wandering also known as either task unrelated thought or colloquially autopilot involves the experiencing of thoughts that do not remain on a single topic for extended periods of time and that is particularly in those instances when people engage in tasks that demand a lot of their attention. Trait level rates were assessed in two large samples to establish associations with either deliberate or unintentional mind wandering. The results showed that unintentional mind wandering was more positively associated with worrying, while deliberate mind wandering was negatively associated, and uniquely so, with worrying. From these findings, it is indicated that those people who increasingly frequently engage in mind wandering types that are unintentional have a higher likelihood of reporting symptoms of worry when they are compared to individuals who often engage in intentional mind wandering. Mind wandering has the potential of buffering against worrying. These findings also provide evidence of mind-wandering being a marker for worrisome thinking and a suggestion is made on an important implication for depression therapy. For students seeking psychology dissertation help, getting familiar with the relationship between worrying and mind wandering. The service provides valuable insights into psychological processes.

Background

Mind wandering has been a hot subject in cognitive neuroscience and psychology over the last few years (Andrillon et al., 2019). Although task-unrelated and stimulus-unrelated thinking has become the most common concept of mind wandering, this paper argues that the content-based description misses the explanation of quality of mind wandering such as the relatively free and random emergence of mental situation as the mind wanders. It further describes spontaneous thought as a condition of mind, and a series of mental states, that emerges relatively freely because of a lack of solid challenges on the contents of every condition and the movements between them (Thornton et al., 2020). It suggests that mental states' range and the changes between them can be restricted in two ways.

At first glance, mind-wandering is seen as an example of an executive process as a result of its involvement with thinking, which is a relatively complex cognitive process. Mind wandering involves attention withdrawal towards an individual’s current concerns from their current situations (Jonkman et al. 2017). During mind-wandering, there is lack of attentional supervision which is an implication of the decoupling of attention from primary tasks. The decoupling of attention from tasks during mind wandering is an indication of the fact that the representation of task environments by individuals are less detailed than during those time periods when people focus their attention on tasks. This suggestion is supported by evidence that there is superficial representation of the current environment that is involved in mind wandering. Mind wandering self-reports have the tendencies of occurring in temporal periods during the encoding of poor task-relevant information (Mohamad and Nandrino, 2021). For instance, those manipulations that bring up increments retrievals go a long way in reducing mind wandering while frequent wandering of the mind has associations with poor retrieval. In an increasingly detailed level, mind wandering`s consequences on retrieval have a resemblance with the attention divisions, which goes a long way in decreasing the influence that conscious recollection has, while leaving the automatic influences as a result of stimulus exposure invariant (Robinson et al. 2020).

Constraints, both deliberate and involuntary, help to restrict the contents of thought and how they evolve. On the other hand, automatic constraints are a group of mechanisms that function from an external of cognitive management, such as sensory or effective salience. Deliberate constraints are applied by mental command, while automatic constraints are a group of mechanisms that perform externally of cognitive control (Bompas et al., 2020).

According to Shepherd & J. (2019), Mind-wandering is a form of random thought that is more intentionally constrained than dreaming but less consciously restricted than imaginative thinking and goal-directed view in our framework. Furthermore, mind wandering can be differentiated from rumination and separate knowledge structures delineated by a high level of automatic constraints, before mentioned as obsessive introspection.

Predetermined compulsions are generally insignificant during dreaming, grow slightly during conception sauntering, grow even more during imaginative thinking, and are strongest during goal-directed commencement. Speculation desists to be irregular at the most extraordinary automatic forces, such as during rumination and obsessive consideration. Modifying moderate to ordinary place level mechanical limitations can occur during dreaming, mind-wandering, and imaginative thinking. The usual network, DN, a sub set based on medial prefrontal cortex and sensory-motor regions can function as factors and variables; the relevancy networks, the prefrontal focus system, and the whole DN system, DNCORE, can impose autonomous limits on thought.

Several studies on mind wandering have identified it as a mental disorder with contents that are contrary to the task or stimulus, according to Chaieb et al. (2019). On the other hand, the mechanisms of mind-wandering and how cognitive processes change over time have been mainly overlooked. In this paper, a complex framework is presented for understanding mind wandering and its relationship to the employment of large-scale functional brain.

The paper suggests that mind wandering belongs to a group of spontaneous-thought scenario that also involves imaginative thinking and dreaming. This complex structure will brings fresh light on mental conditions, such as stress, anxiety, and absence of attention hyperactivity condition, described by spontaneous thought changes (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2018). Mind wandering has been the subject of a lot of research in the last decade. Still, much of it has not considered how important it is to differentiate amid of either direct or unintentional mind wandering.

Even though, a recently sequence of research studies have shown that mind wandering recorded in observational studies often happens with and without purpose and that intentional and indirect mind wandering are distinct (Faber et al., 2020). This emerging research indicates that to improve clarification in the literature, the majority of the mind-wandering literature should be reconsidered to deconstruct these two distinct cognitive experiences (Cole et al., 2019). This study highlights recent developments in mind-wandering research and proposes a novel theoretical framework for understanding the processes that underpin both deliberate and unintentional mind wandering.

It tackles an apparent contradiction in the discourse on mental time travel and mind wandering in this research. How can it be vital that future vision can be both constructive and imaginative at the same time? It define and explains two distinct 'routes' by which abstract thinking ideas are carried to realization, most of which are linked to conscious mental processes.

Regulated, intentional, and study the prevalence processing is required for voluntary future thought. Involuntary or spontaneous future thinking, on the other hand, is based on unconscious processes that enable 'full-fledged' abstract thinking thoughts to voluntarily associate the mind, often prompted by internal or external stimuli (Pujari & V., 2020). To solve the puzzle, it assumes that most unpredictable potential ideas are 'pre-made,' meaning that each hypothetical future insight is a re-iteration of a precast segmental specific time and thus based on virtual, well-understood working memory.

The pre-made theory also explains why random future thoughts happen quickly, are close to subconscious memories, and are all about upcoming tasks and goals. They also suggest that the default mode of imagining the future is a random future vision. The double related to risk management highlights and expands traditional empirical approaches that prioritize constructive prediction. It lays out endless opportunities for researchers to study spontaneous and random ways of potential thought.

The ability to envision or predict events that may or may not occur in the future is known as future episodic thought. It enables humans to participate in complex actions of future-oriented behavior, and it has piqued the interest of cognition, neuropsychology, and neuroscience researchers. In this paper, we examine and challenge a core assumption of future thinking research that has dominated the field for the past decade: that future thinking is a positive and laborious method.

Despite this emphasis on positive processes, recent studies from related fields such as spontaneous mental time travel and mind wandering have given undeniable proof. They suggest that future thoughts can have the same phenomenological richness as those of elicited constructively and without effort or conscious purpose.

In this case, we are talking about involuntary or accidental potential thoughts. The research will be asking the following question: How is it possible that future review is often experienced as random if it is primarily constructive? The study proposes a dual-process account of future thought in this position paper. In this account, we cast doubt on the notion that abstract thinking perception necessitates more executive functions than recalling.

Instead, we suggest that serialized hypothetical thought may occur through two distinct thought functions: a sluggish, cooperative route that entails consciously constructing and explicating a speculative and a fast, random course that frequently involves reanimating a successfully made potential world.

Current findings have shown that under some experimental manipulations, deliberate and unintentional mind wandering can be observed in various ways (Seli et al., 2019). One research, for example, unified reviewing guidance with a thought of a scrutiny test of mind ranging and discovered that people mind-wander more when reexamining than when reading for the first time (Murray et al., 2020). Unless the authors had halted there, they might have concluded that emphasize makes it more challenging to keep our minds from wandering away from the mission unconsciously, which is consistent with existing literature.

Although this is not impossible amylases to arrive at, it proves to be wrong. The follow-ups on studies are using probes that classifies the subjectivity of mind wandering, for example, showed that a rise in intentional mind wandering drove the impacts of reviewing on mind wandering wholly. In contrast, reviewing had no impact on unintentional mind wandering.

In such a similar way, manipulations of task complexity have been shown to have conflicting effects on either deliberate or indirect mind wandering. Participants registered more deliberate mind wandering in a simple task than in a difficult task, but more indirect mind wandering in a challenging opportunities.

However, this finding is important since it confirms the concept that combining intentional and accidental mind wandering would possibly result in underspecified and even inaccurate finals, as it did in the rereading researches mentioned earlier. Undoubtedly, while rates of deliberate and accidental mind wandering differed between the complex and straightforward conditions when the intentionality of the episodes was overlooked, there have been minimal distinctions in rates of mind wandering across states.

As little more than a result, the investigators would have concluded wrongly that the task-difficulty manipulation did not affect mind-wandering rates if they had not distinguished between deliberate and accidental mind walking. Given that the vast majority of mind ranging research has failed to distinguish between direct and indirect types, this and other related findings raise the likelihood that certain previous studies' conclusions were incorrect or, but at the very least, underspecified.

According to the theory, most random future thoughts can be traced back to their original constructed event. According to the view. This method, we believe, is the most cost-effective way of evaluating results from studies on voluntary future thought, intuitive future thinking, prospective memory, and mind wandering. It more accurately represents how people envision the future in daily life. In studies of future thought, however, a unique set of task instructions is used, requiring that imagined future events be precise and "believable, given the respondent's expectations, and innovative, that is, not reports in order by the researcher.

Cause and effect have yet to be discussed in academic forms of consciousness rambling. While the lack of intentionality in such models does not necessarily imply that conscious understanding shifting does not endure, it does suggest that different devices are not imminent to simplify the preservation and occasion of these two kinds of mind wandering.

The Multiple Operational Deficiency narrative states that mind wandering is triggered by a failure of working thought to regulate or overwhelm meddlesome thoughts, a standard model of mind ranging. This model was developed primarily to explain involuntary mind wandering, as shown by the focus on "control failures.

In any case, this model has yet to take into account both deliberate and unintentional mind wandering. The Attentional-Resources account proposes that, rather than representing a lack of executive control, mind wandering necessitates executive-control materials for its survival. Since it is agnostic about the role of intentionality in mind wandering, the account does not define any particular mechanism correlated with intentional and unintentional mind wandering. Can it, on the other hand, make claims about mind walking's intentionality?

Finally, the Process-Occurrence Paradigm, a more recent high-level analytical structure for understanding sauntering, discriminates amid the initiation and continuation of a sense walking (D'Mello et al., 2021)event administrator management negligence description to the beginning and the Attentional-Resources account to the continuation of the attack (Chatwani et al. 2018).

While this framework has clarified the history by determining the ostensible struggle between the Attentional Resource and Executive Control Failures accounts, it appears not to supplement any supplementary knowledge about the purpose of mind-wandering intentionality surpassing the two preceding variants. The general figures of mind wandering, as currently explained, can be presented to imply that, while mind wandering can befall both consciously and accidentally, the couple of forms of reasoning ranging do not need a distinctive general approach.

Aims

This investigation into whether worrying is more associated with deliberate wandering of mind or unintentional mind wandering had one broad aim. The first aim was to do an investigation of whether worrying among non-clinical participants had more associations with deliberate mind wandering or was more associated with unintentional mind wandering. To address aim, an attempt was made to answer two core questions; whether there was an association between mind-wandering and worrying, then off-task thinking in worried people should be activated with more ease, which is with increased frequency than is the case with people who are not worried. Additionally, more evidence could be seen in worried people of increased decoupling when their minds wander off which would be a prediction of increased interference on concurrent behavioral measures in worried individuals in relation to individuals who are not worried. There is the possibility of mind-wandering when someone is worried being increasingly emotional when compared to controls and this makes a suggestion that there is greater physiological activation contained in these episodes. After the establishment of the relationship, the second question was whether worrying was more associated with deliberate mind wandering or unintentional mind wandering.

Typically, this review is based on current models' propensity to avoid directly discussing the difference between involuntary and prearranged mind wandering rather than the explicit rejection of deliberate and unintended mind walking. Despite these challenges, determining whether a given type of mechanism can describe these two forms of mind wandering would be a significant path for the discussion on mind wandering (Murray et al., 2020).

The difference between deliberate and accidental mind wandering has also initiated the door to a slew of new research possibilities. To date, the majority of studies have used dichotomous scrutinizes to test mind strolling at its most basic level: a technique that, it is now known, blurs the differences among the accidental and deliberate mind wandering (Gouraud & J., 2018). As a result, returning this work with this perfection in mind will yield practical of modern shrewdness. The critical problem in these theories was how to properly quantify and explain constructive processes in future thinking without considering the possible role of unconscious thought.

During the investigation of the existing relationship between daily thinking`s process and content, we endeavored to draw upon the psychological flexibility theory and cognitive fusion, which is one of the theory`s key constructs. The focus of cognitive fusion is on the different ways through which people go about experiencing their thoughts, giving reference to inflexibly fusing with the content of cognition, which is a tendency that is commonly observed among people who show psychopathologic symptoms, including worrying (Mohamad and Nandrino, 2021). The people whose relation to their thoughts less flexibly have a higher likelihood of being bothered and upset by the thoughts, and that is especially in those instances when their content is negative, that those whose relation is increasingly flexible and who see their thoughts as just thoughts.

Research Methodology

The research methodology to be used in this research is presented in this section. The chapter provides an in-depth description of research approaches and methods utilized in carrying out the study, gathering data, interpreting results and presenting of findings.

Research method

The quantitative research methodology is utilized in this research. Quantitative research involves systematically investigating phenomenon through the collection of data that is quantifiable and the subsequent performance of statistical, computational and mathematical techniques. Quantitative research goes about collecting information from potential and existing customers through the use of sampling methods and sending out either questionnaires, online polls, online surveys or other types of surveys. After these, the results collected are depicted in numerical forms. When the collected numbers are properly understood they are used for the prediction of services and products and consequently making according changes. This study examines rates of mind-wandering in everyday life through the administration of a protocol sampling daily-life experience. The participants were required to fill out questionnaires that pertained their cognitive activities as they carried out the different activities they did on a daily basis.

Research Design

The research design outlines the framework of research techniques suitable for particular study issues. A descriptive survey research design is used as the primary method for collecting data and the collected data is subsequently used for purposes of determining the extent to which different outcomes can be obtained from the research elements. Additionally, the correlative descriptive survey will be used in the research, because the focus of the research is on associations between worry and Deliberate Mind Wandering and Unintentional Mind Wondering processes.

Participants

For purposes of replicating the findings of the study, analysis of data was done from two nonclinical samples of students of psychology. For the sample, data was collected from different undergraduate students who had the willingness of completing the questionnaires. The researcher ensured that every participant provided consent and their treatment was in accordance with the review committee’s guidelines. The sample was made up of 222 participants who were picked through simple random sampling. An

Materials

For the study, selection of stimuli was dome from the ANEW word norms. Up to 250 stimuli were selected and these were situated in the middle third of the distribution for the three different affective norms

Questionnaires: In addition to the measures, participants were required to complete questionnaires before the session came to an end. The participants were required to fill out the following questionnaires;

Trait mind wandering/ daydreaming questionnaires – To successively measure trait mindfulness, the 15-item Mindful Attention Awareness Scale was used for purposes of measuring trait mindfulness. Also, for purposes of measuring the frequency of attention related errors in daily life as a result of mind wandering, the 120item Attention Related Cognitive Errors Scale (ACRES) was used.

Penn State Worry Questionnaire –this was a 16-item questionnaire that was intended to measure the worry trait through the use of a Likert scale rating from 1 (not all typical of me) to 5 (very typical of me).

Measures

The four-item MW-D scale and four item MW-S scales were used for the purposes of indexing unintentional and intentional mind wandering, respectively. In the MW-D there are those items that have a relationship with intentional mind wandering, like: “I purposely allow my mind to wander,” and on the other hand the MW-S indicate those items that have a relationship to mind wandering that is unintentional, like “I observed that my thoughts were spontaneously wandering.” The scoring of these two scales happens through the use of a seven point Likert scale.

Procedure

When the participants arrived, the researcher began by greeting them and guiding them to seat in front of a computer. The experimental procedure was then outlined to the participants after which every other participant would be invited to reading and signing an informed consent sheet. The researcher had already obtained an informed consent sheet from the University`s Ethics Committee. After reading and signing the consent sheet, the participants were required to complete a short questionnaire that recorded their demographic details, that is, their age and gender. Counterbalancing of the tasks order was done extensively. These participants also gave their consent to involvement in the lab procedure. Half of the participants got assigned randomly to either s positive or negative mood induction and this was followed by assessment of mind wandering which happened through pro-task questionnaires. During the course of the experiment, the measuring of mood state changes happened at four different instances through the use of PANAS: directly before the first mood induction and after the same and also after filling out the post-task questionnaires. Those participants who completed the sessions in negative mood conditions characterized by worrying were put through positive mood induction so that they could recover.

Results

In the following paragraphs, results of the study have been presented. For this, the researcher used SPSS tool to analyse the data collected from different sources. The following equation was used to determine whether worry is more associated with deliberate mind wandering process (D_MW_total) than unintentional mind wandering process (S_MW_total). These are also the independent variables, while worry is the dependent variable. The main purpose of this study is test the hypothesis that worry is mode associated with deliberate mind wandering process than unintentional mind wandering process. In the following paragraphs, descriptive statistics, correlations analysis, ANOVA and coefficients analysis has been presented.

Worry=D_MW_total × 1 +S_MW_total × 2

Descriptive Statistics

As per the above table, out of the total observations for D_MW_total (N = 222), the minimum value was 4 and the maximum value was 28, while the mean was 18.0856 and standard deviation was 5.51976. On the other hand, the minimum value for S_MW_total (N = 222) was 4 and the maximum value was 28, while the mean was 17.8874 and standard deviation was 5.37557. Furthermore, for WorryTotal (N = 222), the mean was 55.3514 and standard deviation was 13.96320; while the minimum value was 19 and maximum value was 80.

Correlations

From the above table, it can be seen that there is a positive correlation between deliberate mind wandering process and worry. The p-value came out to be 0.001, which is less than the critical alpha value of 0.05. Therefore, it can be said that this a statistically significant relationship between deliberate mind wandering and worry among the people. Further, it also means that if the mind of a person deliberately wanders, then they will get more worried.

Correlations

The above table describes and explains the correlation between unintentionally mind wandering process and worry. As per the table, there is a positive and statistically significant relation between the variables, because the p-value is less than the critical alpha value of 0.05. Therefore, even unintentional mind wandering can lead to worry among people.

Model Summary

As per the above table of Model Summary, it can be seen that the value R square is coming out to be 0.236. This means that with 100% change in the dependent variables, there will be a 23.6% chance of change in the dependent variable. Now whether this relationship is statistically significant or not can be seen from the ANOVA table below.

ANOVAa

Predictors: (Constant), S_MW_total, D_MW_total

As per ANOVA, F(2, 219) = 33.916; p = 0.000. As the p-value is coming out to be less than critical alpha value of 0.05, it can be said that both deliberate mind wandering and unintentional mind wandering both have a statistically significant association on worry. Both the variables tend to have a statistically significant relationship with the dependent variable.

As per the above table, it can be seen that the Beta value for S_MW_total was 0.504, while its significance value was 0.000. On the other hand, Beta value for D_MW_total was -0.037 and its significance value was 0.592. Therefore, it can be said that unintentional mind wandering process leads to more worry among people in comparison to the deliberate mind wandering process. On this basis, the hypothesis can be rejected because worry is not more associated to the deliberate mind wandering as compared to the unintentional mind wandering process.

From the overall study, it can be concluded that even though both deliberate and unintentional mind wandering processes are associated with worry. But the study reveals that unintentional mind wandering process is more significantly associated with worry.

Discussion

Across two samples, we sought to establish whether worry was more associated with deliberate mind wandering than unintentional mind wandering. The findings show that while unintentional mind wandering has a positive and strong association with symptoms of worrying, the association between deliberate mind wandering and the symptoms of worrying was relatively weak. Often, the mind gets occupied with mental contents that get constrained minimally by events in the here and now, like mind wandering. These thoughts go on to occupy the thoughts of individuals upward of half of their time and conditions that are non-demanding as they provide individuals with the opportunities of allowing them to connect with the future and past selves, helping them develop long-term plans and are even a potential source of creative inspiration. The mind goes to extensive lengths during the self-generation of thoughts which when coupled with the apparent functionality of the mind, make a suggestion that the mind places increased priority on this type of cognition, when compared to other mental acts. While mind wandering could possibly be unpleasant for the individuals who experience it and could act to disrupt the tasks people are on to, consciousness is facilitated by self-generated thought and through this reflect an evolutionary adaptation for the mind.

These results show that those people who have higher tendencies of engaging in unintentional mind wandering also have higher worrying levels. It is however, worth noting that while unintentional mind wandering is found to have positive associations worrying, it is not possible to determine this relationships causal structure. Most probably, it is possible that is that increased rates of unintentional mind wandering brings about worrying symptoms as a result of the mind wandering precluding a desired level of engagement that is optimal with the environment one lives in (Vago and Zeidan, 2016). There is another possibility in that worrying brings about increased rates of mind wandering that is unintentional. The aforementioned possibility agrees with the findings of other studies that examined the presence of causal channels between moods and unintentional and intentional mind wandering. These studies make suggestions that mood changes come before changes in mind wandering rates. In line with these findings, it would be okay to make an assumption that mood has specific influences on intentional mind wandering levels. Worrying is a mood. It is worth noting that because the findings of the analysis of time-lag are heavily dependent on the lag that is specifically chosen, there is still the possibility that all causal directions provide accurate descriptions of the relationships that exist between mind wandering and negative affect, even though this would also have to happen at different lags. The final possibility is that worrying and unintentional mind wandering are related because of the way they relate with one another, including impaired cognitive control, which could go a long way in leading to the impairing of brain areas that do control tasks like the prefrontal cortex (Marcusson-Clavertz and Kjell, 2018).

Recent research has shown that deliberate and unintentional mind-wandering have the potential of differently behaving under some experimental manipulations. For instance Marcusson,Clavertz and Kjell (2018), brought together a mind wandering thought-probe measure and a rereading manipulation and established that mind-wandering among individuals was more frequent while rereading was comparable to an initial reading. Had the research stopped there, a conclusion would have been made in line with extant literature that rereading made it more difficult for humans to prevent their minds from wandering away unintentionally from tasks. While this as a conclusion is not unreasonable, it is not correct; from follow-up experiments utilizing probes indexing mind-wanderings deliberateness discovered that readings effect on mind-reading was completely driven by a rise in intentional wandering of the mind, and that rereading did not have an influence on unintentional-mind wandering.

In the same breath, research has also proven that difficulties in task manipulations have the potential of having opposing effects on deliberate and unintentional mind wandering. In the study by Seli et al. (2015), participants reported increased unintentional mind-wandering in difficult tasks as compared to easy tasks but reported increased deliberate mind-wandering in easy tasks when a comparison was made with difficult tasks. The former findings are important as they act to reinforce the idea that the standard practice of conflation of deliberate and unintentional mind-wandering have the potential of producing conclusions that are either underspecified or incorrect. These findings provide evidence that challenges the notion of mind wandering being a unitary construct that is reflective, and exclusively, of unintentional thought, while also suggesting that deliberate and unintentional mind wandering is reflective of constructs that are dissociable and that have the potential of behaving differently within empirical investigations.

The propensity of the brain to wander is one of the long-standing human cognition mysteries. In the majority of the previous studies, off-task thinking, in contrast to on-task thinking has been associated with consequences and correlates that are detrimental including attention lapses, task performance disruption, impaired learning and bad moods (Wammes et al. 2016). Additionally, off-task thinking has been established to benefit from prospective planning and creative solving of problems in addition to relieving bored individuals. The delineation of the different factors that different factors governing whether there are associations between detrimental and positive has the potential of shedding light on the different ways through which well-being and optimal cognitive performance can be promoted (Arch et al. 2021).

This strengths of this study included careful screening and employment on a non-clinical population which was done with extreme rigor. Through rigorous screening the confidence in findings is increased in relation to the findings being due to the status of a group. This study was however limited in relation to the extent to which the used questionnaires for data collection and for indexing rates of deliberate and unintentional wandering of the mind conflate mind wandering varieties that are unique. For example there is the probability that MW-D and MW-S would conflate the task-unrelated thought mind wandering thought with the variety of stimulus-independent-thought. That is mainly because these scales items are not able to distinguish between the two mind wandering varieties. There is however need for researchers to endeavor isolating and discussions separately different mind wandering varieties due to the potential of different varieties to have associates, consequences and causes that are unique. Therefore, while the findings of our study point to MW-S having the potential of being used for prediction of individuals symptoms of worrying, there is no clarity on the exact variety and varieties of unintentional mind wandering that have associations with worrying. This necessitates that one is cautious during the generalization of results to different mind wandering varieties. Also, there exists no clarity on whether the present findings stand a chance of obtaining at the state level, in laboratories. Due to the fact that the state levels parallel findings have the potential of bolstering the present findings, it would be necessary for future research to go about exploring the possibility.

There are two points that come about from the aforementioned. The first is that researchers have not yet developed mind wandering trait-level questionnaires that have the potential of separately indexing the experiences different varieties. From this, it is evident that future research would stand to benefit from the development of these types of questionnaires. That would better place the researchers to specify with more clarity the type of mind wandering to be investigated. Also, because the results do not speak to the exact mind wandering varieties that have associations with worthwhile, it would be necessary for studies carried out in the future to determine the extent of generalization by the present results to different unintentional mind wandering varieties.

Conclusion

There has been increased scientific interest in the field of mind wandering which makes it relatively exciting to study the mind as a wanderer. In summary, the present study`s results point to mind-wandering being a relatively complex phenomenon that is also multiply-determined. There are different reasons behind why people mind wander. One of them is that people whose cognitive abilities are more superior have enhanced abilities of exerting control over their thoughts, and therefore, there cases of mind-wandering are fewer (Smallwood et al. 2007). However, is appears as though those individuals who expressed reduced motivation report way more mind-wandering instances, and that is especially, deliberate mind-wandering. Also, those individuals who are in emotional states that are negative, in this case, worrying express more deliberate mind-wandering. Also, there are those individuals who are prone to dreaming disproportionately, and it appears as though these people face challenges in controlling their spontaneous thoughts occurrence.

In general, this study`s results seemingly replicate and further extend research carried out in the past, by suggesting that cognitive abilities have the potential of influencing who has a higher probability of mind wandering and the situations in which the likelihood of mind wandering is highest. During the development of understanding on the different reasons why people’s minds wander, there is need to give consideration to different factors. There are relatively generalizable implications in these findings. For instance, within educational settings, teachers could notice inattentiveness in some of their students who appear to frequently mind wander on a daily basis. There are different reasons as to why this could be happening, and not just because of the low cognitive abilities of the students. When the teacher is knowledgeable of the different factors that are worth of consideration, they could be able to intervene so as to uncover the source of the inattentiveness of the student. Would sleeping more finish their worrying? If they were provided with more incentives, would they be more motivated? All these are reasons why students could potentially be worried. Through comprehension of the different individual and situational factors that bring about mind wandering, it becomes more possible to design appropriate interventions that would enable the reduction of some of mind-wandering`s negative consequences examples which include poor performance, accidents and psychopathological symptomology (Mohamad and Nandrino, 2021).

The present studies research has considerable implications for the choice of therapeutic interventions effective for the treatment of worrying. The concern of traditional cognitive therapy is on training of individuals for purposes of challenging their existing beliefs through the use of the Socratic Method. For success of the approach, it would be necessary for patients to collect evidence that is reliable pertaining to the way the world is. Because our research points to the presence of associations between worrying and mind wandering, there is the possibility of low moods being associated with substantial impairment of the abilities of individuals to create models of the environment that are reliable. A therapeutic intervention like (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) MBCT would be effective for the provision of individuals with training on the different ways through which they could reduce the time they spent in preoccupation states. Principally, MBCT therefore, provides individuals with the skills that are necessary for combatting mind-wandering`s decoupling influences on the processing of information. When individuals are able to reduce the time they spent on decoupled mindfulness training, they are provided with necessary skills for attending to the external world and this goes a long wa in empowering them to process the different events that are necessary for decoding daily and with success, enabling them to stay out of their states of worry.

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