When there is noise on Sherlock Holmes: mind wandering increases with perceptual processing difficulty during reading and listening

Abstract

We investigated whether increased perceptual processing difficulty during reading or listening to a Sherlock Holmes novella impacts mind wandering as well as text comprehension. We presented 175 participants with a novella in either a visual or an auditory presentation format and probed their thoughts and motivational states from time to time during reading/listening. For half of the participants in each presentation-format condition (visual or auditory), the story was superimposed by Gaussian noise. For both presentation formats, the participants who were exposed to noise while processing the story mind-wandered more and performed worse in a later comprehension test than the participants who processed the story without added noise. These negative effects of increased perceptual processing difficulty on task focus and comprehension were partly driven by motivational factors: reading/listening motivation mediated the relationship between perceptual processing difficulty and mind wandering.

Keywords: Mind wandering; Perceptual processing difficulty; Task-unrelated thought; Text comprehension.