A multi-measure investigation of mind wandering, creativity, and attention

In two experiments, multiple measures of mind wandering and creativity were examined to understand the association between the two concepts. In-task measures of freely moving thought, intentional and unintentional mind wandering were collected during a lexical decision and a movie task. A survey was administered to obtain deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering traits. Creative problem solving and divergent thinking tasks were used to assess creative thinking. Experiment 1 found a positive relationship between intentional mind wandering and creative problem solving. Also, two significant interaction effects were present only during the lexical decision task. Experiment 2 included attention control and emotion measures and focused on task-specific effects with a between-subjects design of mind wandering tasks. Attention control positively predicted creative thinking. Deliberate mind wandering trait positively predicted creative thinking above and beyond attention control. In-task measures did not yield a significant effect. Implications for context-specific factors of productive and detrimental mind wandering as well as limitations of the study were discussed.