Iele, Ilaria (2026) When thoughts get sticky: exploring the link between Mind Wandering disengagement difficulty and response inhbition abilities. Research Project 1 (minor thesis), Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences.
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Abstract
Mind Wandering (MW) is characterized by shifts of attention from an ongoing task to internally generated thoughts and feelings. MW is known to impair task performance, especially its rigid and inflexible forms. Previous research demonstrated that MW disrupts the control of rapid action cancellation (i.e., response inhibition). Despite evidence for a shared action- and thought-stopping system, no studies have yet directly examined the relation between response inhibition and the stickiness (i.e., difficulty to disengage from) of irrelevant thoughts. The present study aims at filling this gap by investigating whether perseverative forms of MW predict impaired response inhibition in healthy subjects. Participants completed the Stop-signal task, a validated measure of response inhibition, combined with thought probes to assess both MW episodes and their stickiness, and answered the Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire. Within-subject analysis examined whether increases in MW stickiness predicted response inhibition at the subject level, while between-subject analysis tested whether both trait- and state-level individual differences in thought stickiness are associated to response inhibition. Although trait-level perseverative thinking was associated with stickier MW experiences, the expected link with response inhibition was not consistently supported. This highlights the need of more complex computational models to better capture fluctuations associated with MW.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Research Project 1 (minor thesis)) |
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| Supervisor name: | Vugt, M.K. van |
| Degree programme: | Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences |
| Thesis type: | Research Project 1 (minor thesis) |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Aug 2026 13:44 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Aug 2026 13:44 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/37506 |
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