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Mind-wandering in everyday event comprehension: Memory, attention, and the brain

Objective

Mind-wandering (MW) is the occurrence of thoughts that are decoupled from immediate perceptual inputs and unrelated to the activity at hand. MW represents a substantial part of our daily thinking time and it has substantial negative effects on reading, memory, and the ability to focus attention. At the same time, MW can enhance creativity and afford opportunities to plan for the future. However, most of what we currently know about MW comes from laboratory studies where the tasks from which the mind wanders are simple, boring, repetitive, and do not reflect the richness of daily life events. A limited body of research using experience sampling gives a coarse-grained characterization of MW in real-life situations, but this approach cannot measure the detailed behavioral structure of MW, or its neural correlates, to reveal underlying mechanisms. To overcome this barrier, we will leverage new advances in methods to study naturalistic event comprehension in the laboratory. We will adopt a multi-method approach that will combine (i) validated event cognition tasks that involve the viewing of movies of naturalistic everyday activities with (ii) state-of-the-art techniques to measure the behavioral, physiological, and neural correlates of MW. Study 1 will use eye-tracking to determine whether and how the event structure of naturalistic activities affects the perceptual decoupling component of MW. Study 2 will examine how the structure of everyday activities can modulate the content of MW episodes. Finally, Study 3 will use functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how the neural correlates of MW are modulated by the event structure of everyday activities. Together, these studies will provide the foundations for a detailed account of MW in naturalistic settings, laying the basis for future interventions aimed at helping individuals to capitalize on the benefits of MW in their daily life while minimizing the associated costs.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF-GF - Global Fellowships

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2017

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 160 465,20
Address
PLACE DU 20 AOUT 7
4000 LIEGE
Belgium

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Region
Région wallonne Prov. Liège Arr. Liège
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 160 465,20

Partners (1)

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