On the alleged memory-undermining effects of daydreaming (original) (raw)
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Remembering to Forget: The Amnesic Effect of Daydreaming
Psychological …, 2010
Daydreaming mentally transports people to another place or time. Many daydreams are similar in content to the thoughts that people generate when they intentionally try to forget. Thus, thoughts like those generated during daydreaming can cause forgetting of previously encoded events. We conducted two experiments to test the hypothesis that daydreams that are more different from the current moment (e.g., in distance, time, or circumstance) will result in more forgetting than daydreams that are less different from the current moment, because they result in a greater contextual shift. Daydreaming was simulated in the laboratory via instructions to engage in a diversionary thought. Participants learned a list of words, were asked to think about autobiographical memories, and then learned a second list of words. They tended to forget more words from the first list when they thought about their parents' home than when they thought about their current home (Experiment 1). They also tended to forget more when they thought about an international vacation than when they thought about a domestic vacation (Experiment 2). These results support a context-change account of the amnesic effects of daydreaming.
Associations Between Daydreaming Style and Information Processing Predispositions
Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 1986
Various domains of chronic predispositions in information processing have been studied from different perspectives. For example, strict experimentally-based information processing paradigms stem from a different research tradition than daydreaming styles. This study considers the association between these domains by examining the interrelations between two-self report measures of chronic information processing. One measure is the Need for Cognition, developed in the social cognition literature to study individual differences in chronic tendencies to utilize information. The second measure, the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory, is a measure of daydreaming style. Results show that these measures are related. A single bipolar dimension measuring affective/evaluative domains in information processing underlying the common properties of both measures is identified. Extensions of this research to domains in clinical and social psychology are discussed.
The Comorbidity of Daydreaming Disorder (Maladaptive Daydreaming)
Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 2017
To determine the comorbidity profile of individuals meeting criteria for a proposed new disorder, daydreaming disorder (more commonly known as maladaptive daydreaming [MD]), the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders were administered to 39 participants who met criteria for MD on a structured interview. We determined high rates of comorbidity: 74.4% met criteria for more than three additional disorders, and 41.1% met criteria for more than four. The most frequent comorbid disorder was attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (76.9%); 71.8% met criteria for an anxiety disorder, 66.7% for a depressive disorder, and 53.9% for an obsessive-compulsive or related disorder. Notably, 28.2% have attempted suicide. Individuals meeting criteria for MD have complex psychiatric problems spanning a range of DSM-V disorders. This finding provides evidence that MD is different than normal daydreaming and that these individuals experience considerable distress and impairment.
Daydreaming and Self-Awareness
What can phenomenology contribute to the cross-disciplinary science of daydreaming? The central questions that guide phenomenological investigations of daydreaming can be formulated as follows: What must consciousness be, if it is to be capable of daydreaming? How does daydreaming relate to other modes of experience, and especially mind-wandering, lucid and non-lucid dreaming, and phantasizing? What are the eidetic features and constitutive functions of daydreaming in the overall life of consciousness? While these questions are fundamental to research on daydreaming, answers to them are nowhere to be found. This allows one to say that phenomenology can make an important contribution to the science of daydreaming. Moreover, insofar as phenomenology is a methodologically-oriented cross-disciplinary science of consciousness, it cannot afford to ignore daydreaming. My goal in this chapter is to show why a phenomenological analysis of daydreaming can significantly enrich our understanding of conscious life. Of central importance are the following three insights: 1) The life of consciousness is characterized by the intertwining of sleep and wakefulness. Just as there is wakefulness in sleep, so also, there is sleep in wakefulness. 2) The life of consciousness is not confined to the here and now. Besides those experiences, which unfold from the present standpoint, there is also another group of experiences, which can be qualified as absorbed, or displaced, experiences. 3) Phenomenological analysis of daydreaming brings to light that different modes of experience are characterized by different modes of self-awareness.
Daydreams incorporate recent waking life concerns but do not show delayed incorporations
2018
This study investigates the time course of incorporation of waking life experiences into daydreams. Thirty-one participants kept a diary for 10 days, reporting major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs) and major concerns (MCs). They were then cued for daydream, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and N2 dream reports in the sleep laboratory. There was a higher incorporation into daydreams of MCs from the previous two days (dayresidue effect), but no day-residue effect for MDAs or PSEs, supporting a function for daydreams of processing current concerns. A day-residue effect for PSEs and the delayed incorporation of PSEs from 5-7 days before the dream (the dream-lag effect) have previously been found for REM dreams. Delayed incorporation was not found in this study for daydreams. Daydreams might thus differ in function from REM sleep dreams. However, the REM dream-lag effect was not replicated here, possibly due to design differences from previous studies.
Focused Daydreaming and Mind-Wandering
2015
In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency (i.e. mental agency with the purpose to voluntarily produce certain mental representations), mind-wandering is not – though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve mental agency at all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mind-wandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness – in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved.
Objectives To examine the impact of memory accessibility on episodic future thinking. Design Single case study of neurological patient HCM and an age-matched comparison group of neurologically healthy controls. Methods We administered a full battery of tests assessing general intelligence, memory and executive functioning. To assess autobiographical memory, the Autobiographical Memory Interview (Kopelman, Wilson & Baddeley, 1990) was administered. The Past Episodic and Future Episodic sections of Dalla Barba’s Confabulation Battery (Dalla Barba, 1993) and a specifically tailored Mental Time Travel Questionnaire were administered to assess future thinking in HCM and age-matched controls. Results HCM presented with a deficit in forming new memories (anterograde amnesia) and recalling events from before the onset of neurological impairment (retrograde amnesia). HCM’s autobiographical memory impairments are characterised by a paucity of memories from recent life. In comparison with controls, two features of his future thoughts are apparent: Reduced episodic future thinking and outdated content of his episodic future thoughts. Conclusions This paper suggests we should look beyond popular conceptualisations of the past-future relation in amnesia via focussing on reduced future thinking. Investigating both the quantity and quality of future thoughts produced by amnesic patients may lead to developments in understanding the complex nature of future thinking disorders resulting from memory impairments.
Background. When a person experiences maladaptive daydreaming (MD), they spend a prolonged period daydreaming with a strong sense of presence. The symptoms of MD are often excessive, interfere with functioning, and are linked to distress and comorbid mental disorders. In this paper, apparent false memory is described in the context of a woman with MD and visual impairment due to a progressive eye condition. Her vivid daydreams seemed indistinguishable from actual memories. Case Report. A 35-year-old woman with a lifelong MD reported three incidents of fabricating detailed false memories of events that her family confirmed never occurred: obtaining a new job, miscarrying twins, and hospitalization for COVID-19. She experienced anxiety and shame when the stories were disproven. The assessment confirmed MD, PTSD, OCD, and other disorders. Her verbal memory was below average, especially for longer narratives. Her misattributions of daydreams as real-life memories may relate to reliance on vivid mental images over deteriorating vision and source monitoring deficits. Conclusion. This first reported case of confabulations in an individual with MD and visual disability suggests daydreams could potentially be mistaken for actual events in some MD cases. While sensitive, more research is needed on the prevalence of false memories among individuals with MD. The default mode network, prefrontal cortex, and their connectivity may be implicated in generating vivid daydreams and misattributing them to actual episodic events. Understanding the relationship between sensory impairments, dissociation, and susceptibility to memory distortions could inform interventions to improve reality testing for some MD patients.
Thinking about thinking: Neural mechanisms and effects on memory
It is a well-established finding that memory encoding is impaired if an external secondary task (e.g. tone discrimination) is performed simultaneously. Yet, while studying we are also often engaged in internal secondary tasks such as planning, ruminating, or daydreaming. It remains unclear whether such a secondary internal task has similar effects on memory and what the neural mechanisms underlying such an influence are. We therefore measured participants' blood oxygenation level dependent responses while they learned word-pairs and simultaneously performed different types of secondary tasks (i.e., internal, external, and control). Memory performance decreased in both internal and external secondary tasks compared to the easy control condition. However, while the external task reduced activity in memory-encoding related regions (hippocampus), the internal task increased neural activity in brain regions associated with self-reflection (anterior medial prefrontal cortex), as well as in regions associated with performance monitoring and the perception of salience (anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex). Resting-state functional connectivity analyses confirmed that anterior medial prefrontal cortex and anterior insula/dorsal anterior cingulate cortex are part of the default mode network and salience network, respectively. In sum, a secondary internal task impairs memory performance just as a secondary external task, but operates through different neural mechanisms.
The Productive Character of Daydreaming: A Phenomenological Study
Ekstasis, 2022
This article seeks to discuss what one can understand about the productive character of consciousness from a phenomenological point of view, a topic that will be explored in relation to presentifications. First, I will reconstruct two models Husserl used in his attempts to capture what is specific to presentification (the pictorial model and the reproduction of impressions model). Then, I will broaden the results obtained through the second model by systematizing three associative forms which link presentified contents in the daydreaming experience (resemblance, contiguity, and evocativeness).