Is a wandering mind better at committing certain things to memory, as opposed to a mind that is more focused? Research by a Fordham psychology professor suggests the answer is yes.
Specifically, people are more likely to remember a scene that passes before their eyes if they let their minds wander right afterward, following the chain of thoughts touched off by what they saw. That’s according to a recent study co-authored by Elissa Aminoff, Ph.D.
It’s one of many studies in recent years that challenge the view of mind wandering as simple disengagement and show its potential for enhancing memory. The study, published in Memory & Cognition, stems from a discovery that Aminoff and other researchers made about 15 years ago: that the brain regions involved in remembering scenes—as opposed to, say, faces or objects—overlap with those activated when the mind is wandering.
“A lot of people think about perception and memory in isolation and think about our state of mind as separate, not relevant,” she said. “But we said no, actually, what is going on in your head at that moment is going to affect how you see things and how you remember them.”
Daydreaming to Remember
Her study targets a particular variety of mind wandering—associative thought, as opposed to other varieties like dwelling on your to-do list or idly thinking about nothing in particular.
In associative thought, something we see prompts the mind to hop from one related idea to the next. The study examined this process by showing 75 people images of various everyday scenes—a beach, a kitchen, a street—for a fraction of a second.
Some people were then told to write down the string of related thoughts that came to mind—for instance, after seeing a ski site, they might write “snow, ice, temperature, fire, marshmallow,” the study says. Other participants, after seeing the image, were told to write five random words starting with a given letter.
Later, when everyone was shown a bigger collection of images and told to identify the ones they had seen earlier, people were “significantly” more likely to correctly identify an image, or pick one that resembled it, if they had written the string of related words, the study says.
Because people only had to identify the overall scene they had viewed before, and sometimes picked a similar scene instead, the study only shows how people can remember the gist of what they saw; retaining details about a scene would likely require a more conscious effort, Aminoff said. But the study clearly shows that mind wandering is essential to understanding how people perceive and remember things, she said.
In everyday life, “we have a lot going on in our head as we navigate the environment and process all this visual information,” Aminoff said. “If you are in an associative mind state, you could actually be engaging with the environment more.”
The Wandering Mind in Education
The study has implications for learning environments, like classrooms, and the kind of decorations that could stimulate and reinforce students’ learning, she said. It suggests that “we don’t have to be pinpoint focused to be able to learn,” she said. “Maybe if we are engaging in more creative or associative thought … we’ll remember things better.”
And it also shows that researchers studying perception should probably take a “whole person” view of study participants, considering them holistically and accounting for their mindsets during studies.
“We expect people to be just so engaged with our studies that [their mindset] shouldn’t matter,” she said. “But this [study] is kind of saying it does.”
