Learning more while our minds wander?
- Adéla Ondráčková
- Apr 8
- 2 min read
We have all experienced it at least once…
You are supposed to focus and suddenly you catch yourself thinking about something completely unrelated to the actual task you should be doing. Mind wandering is defined as a shift of attention away from a primary problem towards internal things like daydreams about fictional worlds or memories and plans tied to actual experiences. But is beating yourself up about focusing better always worth it?
Let’s dive in! Cognitive neuroscience is still unsure about the processes behind mind wandering, but it has been established we do it almost 50% of our waking time, so there has to be some meaning to it. Even though it was previously associated with poor performance in the majority of cognitive domains, new research advocates for it, suggesting a potential benefit while executing less attention-demanding tasks, proposing that it could actually be helpful during specific types of work.
This particular study focused on the effect of mind wandering during exercises that require automatic and habitual learning. Their experiment consisted of measuring the ability to subconsciously notice and extract hidden patterns from the information stream in the carefully designed implicit probabilistic learning task using high-density electroencephalography. Sure enough, participants showed better performance in probabilistic learning during periods of mind wandering, especially when these unrelated thoughts came to them unintentionally. Additionally, both mind wandering and probabilistic learning were associated with slow frequency neural activity, which points to a possibility of mind wandering reflecting a transient-like, “offline” state, enabling rapid learning and memory consolidation.
The mentioned benefits are surprising and they challenge the predominant view of mind wandering to be completely detrimental and highlight its complex role in human cognition, which has to be further investigated. For now, we can think twice every time we catch ourselves wandering around in our head, maybe it’s helping us in ways we don’t even realize yet.
Resources:
Simor, P., et al. (2025) Mind wandering during implicit learning is associated with increased periodic EEG activity and improved extraction of hidden probabilistic patterns
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