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Влияние состояния «ухода в свои мысли» на выполнение слуховой конденсационной задачи: поведенческий анализ в рамках парадигмы когнитивного контроля
The state of mind wandering is related to complete or partial detachment of attention from external information. Under this state, attention switches from the ongoing primary task towards unrelated thoughts, fantasies and feelings. Current understanding of the role of cognitive control in the initiation and sustaining the state of mind wandering is ambiguous, and specific mechanisms of deterioration in the performance quality of the ongoing activity are not clear. The aim of this study was to identify changes in the ongoing task performance under the state of mind-wandering, and to find out the main cause of error commission during this state – either a reduction in the motor threshold, or weakening of specific representations involved in the execution of the ongoing task. The current study employed the auditory condensation task; performance accuracy and response times were analyzed. The state of mind-wandering was probed by way of inquiry interrupting the experiment. During the state of mind wandering compared to the on-task state, task performance accuracy decreased, and pre-error speeding as well error slowing effects were abolished. The current findings evidence that under the state of mind-wandering the level of cognitive control involved in the ongoing external task performance decreased. The pattern of behavioral measures obtained hints that the basic mechanism of performance deterioration is related to the weakening of specific representations involved in task performance rather than to a drop in the motor threshold.