An exploration of the effects of mind wandering on narrative production skills

The term “mind wandering” (MW) refers to a shifting of attention away from a primary task toward internal thoughts. Growing evidence shows that MW affects performance on cognitive tasks. The aim of this study was to assess for the first time whether MW affects also narrative skills. A Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) was employed to investigate the effect of MW on attentive skills through a probe sampling methodology. Moreover, the participants were asked to produced samples of narrative discourse by administering a story-telling task, that were analysed using a multilevel approach to discourse analysis. Indices derived from SART showed a strong positive correlation with the production of Filler Utterances. This suggests that MW may also affects narrative skills, as those who experience more MW episodes tend to fill their descriptions with irrelevant comments.