Research
A mind not tied up to the here and now is closer to the norm rather than the exception. In about half of the time, our minds do not focus on thoughts related to certain task at hand, but on thoughts related to recent events or future plans. Driving home, our mind can easily flow to a recent discussion about an experiment or to the bottle of wine that we will buy for dinner. While ‘mind wandering’, we are able to demonstrate appropiate behavior. Furthermore, we are still able to react to a cat crossing suddenly the road.
My main focus of study is the relation between cognitive control and mind wandering. To what extent am I able to detect conflict while my mind wanders? and, will I be able to respond adaptatively to this conflict? We adopt the strategy of triangulation whereby internal mental processes are inferred based on a combination of self-reports, physiological (pupil dilation, eye blink ratio and EEG) and behavioral measures.
