The footprints of a wandering mind: Further examination of the time course of an attentional lapse

Recently, understanding the sequence of events that precedes an attentional lapse has become an important question in cognitive neuroscience. To examine the processes which lead to such errors, participants performed a simple go/no-go task used for measuring attentional failure. To study the role of internal distraction, the participants' tendency to daydreaming was assessed via a questionnaire. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to decompose the response time (RT) course into the underlying components. Analysis identified three components that made up 54% of the data collected. One factor indicated the overall magnitude of the RT in a given block. This factor showed a significant negative weighting prior to an error. A second factor indicating that RT shifted from slow to fast was also identified. The parity of this factor was predictive of error for individuals high on daydreaming, indicating that errors in individuals with a rich, imaginative mental life showed a shift from slow to fast responding prior to an attentional lapse. This analysis provides further evidence that attentional lapses can result from events that took place many seconds before the mistake and that the elements of the default mode may be involved in these lapses.