![]() Mind wandering reflects the capacity to disengage internal thoughts from the external environment, known as perceptual decoupling. Patterns of ongoing thought vary across different tasks and individuals and dynamically change across time, such that an individual may have multiple spontaneous alternations between task focus and off-task thoughts. Here we ask whether our ongoing decision making process is also disrupted by internal information, for example, in the form of unintentional and intentional task-unrelated imagery and thoughts (i.e., mind wandering) that are unhelpful to the task at hand. Consistent with this theory, previous studies showed that model-based decision making is impaired under dual-task load and during transcranial magnetic stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and depends on cognitive capacities such as working memory and processing speed. Theoretically, model-based decision-making is thought to rely on cognitive computations that involve anticipating the consequences of one’s actions based on a cognitive model of the environment. ![]() Adaptive behavior depends on the ability to flexibly regulate their respective contributions under varying contexts. Habits and goals work in tandem and each system has an equally valuable approach to guiding action selection. Computational models have described habits as depending on model-free retrospective reinforcement learning that simply repeats the actions that lead to a gain in the past, and goals as relying on model-based prospective planning that is guided by the likelihood of affective outcomes that are predicted by a model of the environment. We often base our decisions on two systems : habits (model-free) and goals (model-based). We here were interested in whether such mind wandering impairs the goal-directed aspects of decisions, while leaving the action of habits unaffected. During mind wandering, our thoughts are distracted from the current external task (e.g., of making a decision), and are instead focused on other thoughts. When making decisions, we often think about the consequences of the decision to guide goal-directed choices, but we also rely on habits reflecting the past. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Interested individuals can contact with data access requests.įunding: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), grant number FOR 1617 (subproject 3, Modelling learning, SCHA 1971/1-2 to DJS) and grant number (Projektnummer) 491466077. ![]() This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Data are available, with restrictions due to confidentiality in line with Berlin Data Protection Act (Berliner Datenschutzgesetz -BlnDSG). Received: MaAccepted: DecemPublished: January 26, 2023Ĭopyright: © 2023 Liu et al. ![]() Marshall, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, UNITED STATES Citation: Liu S, Rabovsky M, Schad DJ (2023) Spontaneous mind wandering impairs model-based decision making.
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