Nice News: Head in the Clouds? There May Be Benefits to Keeping It There, Study Finds

Head in the Clouds? There May Be Benefits to Keeping It There, Study Finds

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Mind-wandering tends to get a bad rap, especially in an educational context. A recent study, however, found that letting your mind drift might not be harmful when it comes to learning a new task — in fact, it may even be helpful.
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Researchers in Hungary fitted 37 people with scalp electrodes to monitor their brain activity. Participants were then given an exercise that involved watching an arrow on a TV screen and hitting a key on a keyboard to indicate what direction it went in, per Australia’s ABC News. Throughout the activity, they were intermittently asked three questions about their attentiveness: if their mind had wandered, if they’d been thinking about anything at all, or if they had been focused on the task.
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Using the data from the electrodes and the participant responses, the scientists determined if their attention had wandered and evaluated whether it affected their ability to complete the task. They found that “mind-wandering while doing the task did not worsen performance, and in some cases even enhanced learning,” per a news release. Study authors also noted an association between a wandering mind and probabilistic learning, meaning participants used prior experience to assess the likelihood of something happening.
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This study adds to research that shows daydreaming can help us solve problems and reach our goals — and suggests that we may need to carve out more time for passive learning, said co-author Péter Simor: “As our brain needs sleep, maybe we also need passive ways of learning, or ‘wakeful rest,’ to recover from tasks that require your brain to be online and engaged.”

Note:  The above comes directly from their website.  Click here to read more.

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