Daydreaming Again? 5 Facts About the Wandering Mind
Daydreaming sometimes gets a bad reputation: workers who spend meetings thinking about winning the lottery are probably not the most productive. But research has shown that not all daydreaming is bad. For example, daydreaming motivates people to work toward accomplishing their goals, said Dr. Matthew Lorber, acting director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. For example, if a high school student daydreams about getting into a good college, such daydreaming may motivate him or her to actually study more during high school in order to get into a good college, he said.
Here are a few other surprising facts about daydreaming.
1. We daydream on purpose
Though people may think of daydreaming as something they do unintentionally, research has suggested that people sometimes zone out on purpose. Moreover, the circumstances in which such intentional mind-wandering occurs may be different from those in which people unintentionally daydream.
The researchers said they think that people intentionally let their minds wander during easy tasks because they know they can get away with not paying attention to what they are doing — it won't hurt their performance. But when they complete a difficult task, they know they need to focus to complete it well, and therefore are less likely to zone out on purpose.
2. Blinking and Thinking
They found that people in the study tended to blink more during the moments when their minds wandered, compared with the moments in which they were more focused on the task.
3. Daydreaming can help in problem-solving
If you are stuck on a problem, letting your mind wander for a bit may help you get unstuck. Researchers suggested that the brain areas that allow people to solve complex problems become more active during daydreaming.
"Mind-wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness," "But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream – much more active than when we focus on routine tasks." The findings suggest that daydreaming may serve to distract our attention from immediate tasks to solve other, more important problems, the researchers said.
4. Daydreaming amnesia
For some people, letting their mind wander makes it tough to remember what they were doing right before their mind drifted. Research has suggested that such "daydreaming amnesia" is exacerbated if your mind drifts further from your current moment. For example, it's more common when your mind drifts to memories of an overseas trip rather than a staycation, or to a memory of an event that occurred five years ago as opposed to two days ago.
5. Zapping a certain brain area may actually increase how often people daydream.
Researchers found that when they stimulated people's frontal lobes with a mild electrical current, the people reported experiencing more daydreams than usual. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that regulates our self-control, planning and logical thinking.
Article Source: http://www.livescience.com/56096-surprising-facts-about-daydreaming.html
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VOCABULARY WORDS:
1. Wandering-(v)- stop concentrating and start thinking about other things, especially because you are bored or worried
2. Cognitive-(n)of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)
3. Staycation-(n)- a vacation spent at home or nearby
4. Zapping-used to indicate a sudden or instantaneous occurrence
5. Neuroscientist- a person who study nerves and especially of how nerves affect learning and behavior
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. Do you daydream at work? How often? How does this affect your productivity?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of daydreaming?
3. According to the article, how can daydreaming help people with problem solving?
