Citation

Faber M, Radvansky GA, D'Mello SK. Cognition 2018; 173: 133-137.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, United States; Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, United States; Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.007

PMID

29405946

Abstract

How does the dynamic structure of the external world direct attention? We examined the relationship between event structure and attention to test the hypothesis that narrative shifts (both theoretical and perceived) negatively predict attentional lapses. Self-caught instances of mind wandering were collected while 108 participants watched a 32.5 min film called The Red Balloon. We used theoretical codings of situational change and human perceptions of event boundaries to predict mind wandering in 5-s intervals. Our findings suggest a temporal alignment between the structural dynamics of the film and mind wandering reports. Specifically, the number of situational changes and likelihood of perceiving event boundaries in the prior 0-15 s interval negatively predicted mind wandering net of low-level audiovisual features. Thus, mind wandering is less likely to occur when there is more event change, suggesting that narrative shifts keep attention from drifting inwards.

Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Attention; Event cognition; Film comprehension; Mind wandering