Trial reportPloS one2018
Negative mood and mind wandering increase long-range temporal correlations in attention fluctuations.
Trial report in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Relative Accuracy of Different Methods for Measuring Mind Wandering Subtypes: A Systematic Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- Lapses of attention.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Further unpacking age-related differences in mind wandering: The roles of emotional valence and meta-awareness.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Extending homeostasis to thought dynamics for a comprehensive explanation of mind-wandering.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Reliability and validity of the Brief Attention and Mood Scale of 7 Items: a self-administered, online assessment.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- EEG complexity measures for detecting mind wandering during video-based learning.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A combined experimental-correlational approach to the construct validity of performance-based and self-report-based measures of sustained attention.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2024Article
- Better than DFA? A Bayesian Method for Estimating the Hurst Exponent in Behavioral Sciences.ArXiv · 2023Article
- Temporal Structure in Sensorimotor Variability: A Stable Trait, But What For?Computational brain & behavior · 2023Article
- Article
- Long-term residential sunlight exposure associated with cognitive function among adults residing in Finland.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Slowed reaction times in cognitive fatigue are not attributable to declines in motor preparation.Experimental brain research · 2022Article
- Assessing Team Effectiveness by How Players Structure Their Search in a First-Person Multiplayer Video Game.Cognitive science · 2022Article
- The steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) tracks "sticky" thinking, but not more general mind-wandering.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Pre-retirement Employees Experience Lasting Improvements in Resilience and Well-Being After Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Critical synchronization and 1/f noise in inhibitory/excitatory rich-club neural networks.Scientific reports · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There is growing evidence that the intermittent nature of mind wandering episodes and mood have a pronounced influence on trial-to-trial variability in performance. Nevertheless, the temporal dynamics and significance of such lapses in attention remains inadequately understood. Here, we hypothesize that the dynamics of fluctuations in sustained attention between external and internal sources of information obey so-called critical-state dynamics, characterized by trial-to-trial dependencies with long-range temporal correlations. To test this, we performed behavioral investigations measuring reaction times in a visual sustained attention task and cued introspection in probe-caught reports of mind wandering. We show that trial-to-trial variability in reaction times exhibit long-range temporal correlations in agreement with the criticality hypothesis. Interestingly, we observed the fastest responses in subjects with the weakest long-range temporal correlations and show the vital effect of mind wandering and bad mood on this response variability. The implications of these results stress the importance of future research to increase focus on behavioral variability.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.