The validity of the online thought-probing procedure of mind wandering is not threatened by variations of probe rate and
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The validity of the online thought‑probing procedure of mind wandering is not threatened by variations of probe rate and probe framing Anna‑Lena Schubert1 · Gidon T. Frischkorn1 · Jan Rummel1 Received: 6 November 2018 / Accepted: 23 April 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the measurement of mind wandering during ongoing tasks. The frequently used online thought-probing procedure (OTPP), in which individuals are probed on whether their thoughts are on-task or not while performing an ongoing task, has repeatedly been criticized, because variations in the frequency of thought probes and the order in which on-task and off-task thoughts are referred to have been shown to affect mind-wandering rates. Hitherto, it is unclear whether this susceptibility to measurement variation only affects mean response rates in probe-caught mind wandering or poses an actual threat to the validity of the OTPP, endangering the replicability and generalizability of study results. Here, we show in a sample of 177 students that variations of the frequency or framing of thought probes do not affect the validity of the OTPP. While we found that more frequent thought probing reduced the rate of probe-caught mind wandering, we did not replicate the effect that mind wandering is more likely to be reported when off-task thoughts are referred to first rather than second. Crucially, associations between probe-caught mind wandering and task performance, as well as associations between probe-caught mind wandering and covariates (trait mind wandering, reaction-time variability in the metronomeresponse task, and working-memory capacity) did not change with variations of the probing procedure. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the great heterogeneity in the way the OTPP is implemented across different studies endangers the replicability and generalizability of study results. Data and analysis code are available at https://osf.io/7w8bm/.
Introduction The body of the literature on mind wandering has been continuously growing, which may not be surprising, because mind wandering plays a critical role for performance in cognitive tasks and many applied domains. For instance, mind wandering during reading, during listening to lectures, and even during driving has been shown to be negatively associated with performance in the respective tasks (Risko, Anderson, Sarwal, Engelhardt, & Kingstone, 2012; Smallwood & Schooler, 2015; Unsworth & McMillan, 2013; Yanko & Spalek, 2014). However, how can mind wandering be assessed during an ongoing task? A widely used method is the online thoughtprobing procedure (OTPP). In the OTPP, individuals are * Anna‑Lena Schubert anna‑[email protected]‑heidelberg.de 1
Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Hauptstrasse 47‑51, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
repeatedly probed on whether their thoughts had been ontask or not while performing an ongoing task. The OTPP has face validity and probe-caught mind
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