Jonathan Smallwood studies mind-wandering and the allocation of attention. His work compares task performance with reports or other indicators of thought directed away from the ongoing task. In the creative-incubation study with Benjamin Baird and colleagues, activity during an intervening period was manipulated before later performance was measured. The contrast connects off-task thought to an experimentally specified context rather than treating every instance of distraction as equivalent. [ref]
Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation by Benjamin Baird and others. 2012, incubation-task conditions and subsequent idea generation
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