I thought the article Schooler was particularly interesting this week. In his experiment, Schooler talks a lot about mind wandering. In the article, Schooler contends that, "mind wandering … often occurs without intention or even awareness that one’s mind has drifted." This part of the article particularly interested me, because before it Schooler also says that mind wandering is a "goal driven" process. I think these two points are somewhat contradictory. If mind wandering is actually the process of our mind "drifting" while we are supposed to be working on a particular task, wouldn't that mean that mind wandering isn't "goal driven", rather the opposite? Mind wandering doesn't have a specific goal in mind, and is often a distraction from teh current goal of an individual, so it would appear to be the opposite. This got me thinking, though, is there any evolutionary purpose to mind-wandering? is it more evident in certain kinds of people?
Schooler touches on this part a little bit, but it would probably be more apparent in people with shorter attention spans, those that can't focus too well (going back to the reading a few weeks ago on attention). What about an evolutionary purpose though? I think mind wandering does, to an extent, serve an evolutionary purpose. In many ways, creativity is best seen through mind wandering. The most creative people are those that don't have their attention focused on a single task, but rather let their minds go where they will, arriving at an idea that is compeltely different from what they started at.
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