In sight, out of mind? Disengagement at encoding gradually reduces recall of location

Disengaging from the external world—a phenomenon referred to as mind wandering—is a common experience that has been shown to be associated with detriments in cognitive performance across a large range of tasks. In the current web-based study, we used a continuous delayed estimation paradigm to investigate the impact of task disengagement at encoding on subsequent recall of location. Task disengagement was assessed with thought probes on a dichotomous (off- vs. on-task) and a continuous response scale (from 0% to 100% on-task). This approach allowed us to consider perceptual decoupling in both a dichotomous and a graded manner. In a first study (n = 54), we found a negative relationship between levels of task disengagement at encoding and subsequent recall of location measured in degrees. This finding supports a graded perceptual decoupling process rather than a decoupling that happens in an all-or-none manner. In a second study (n = 104) we replicated this finding. An analysis of 22 participants showing enough off-task trials to fit the data with the standard mixture model, revealed that in this particular subsample, being disengaged from the task at encoding was related to worse long-term memory performance in terms of likelihood to recall, but not in terms of precision with which information is recalled. Overall, the findings suggest a graded nature of task disengagement that covaries with fine-grained differences in subsequent recall of location. Going forwards it will be important to test the validity of continuous measures of mind-wandering.