The role of focus back effort in the relationships among motivation, interest, and mind wandering: an individual difference perspective

Abstract

Considerable research suggests a link between mind wandering and diminished levels of motivation and interest. During episodes of mind wandering, individuals may engage in efforts to redirect their attention back to the task at hand (known as focus back effort). Building on the resource-control hypothesis, we hypothesized that the influence of interest and motivation on mind wandering may be mediated by focus back effort. In Study 1, we employed a latent-variable approach to investigate these relationships across three tasks with varying cognitive demands. The results showed that individual differences in interest indirectly influenced mind wandering through the mediating factors of motivation and focus back effort. Furthermore, individual differences in interest indirectly predicted task performance through the mediating factors of motivation, focus back effort, and mind wandering during the high-load task. In Study 2, we replicated the relationships among these factors in a reading comprehension task. The results consistently support the role of focus back effort as an adaptive mechanism for executive control, enabling the allocation of cognitive resources to both mind wandering and task performance. These findings underscore the significance of focus back effort in elucidating the interplay between mind wandering, motivation, interest, and task performance. Importantly, our results align with the resource-control theory.

Keywords: Focus back effort; Individual difference; Interest; Mind wandering; Motivation.

Fig. 1

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for mind wandering (MW), focus back effort (FBE), motivation, and interest. The correlations between the latent variables (circles) are represented by double-headed arrows linking these variables. Single-headed arrows from latent variables to observed variables (squares) represent the loadings of each manifest variable onto the latent variable. All numbers appearing beside each arrow are standardized. All paths are statistically significant at the p < 0.05 level. MW-SART = mind wandering in the sustained attention to response task; MW-0B = mind wandering in the 0-back task; MW-1B = mind wandering in the 1-back task; FBE-SART = focus back effort in the sustained attention to response task; FBE-0B = focus back effort in the 0-back task; FBE-1B = focus back effort in the 1-back task; Motivation-SART = motivation in the sustained attention to response task; Motivation-0B = motivation in the 0-back task; Motivation-1B = motivation in the 1-back task; Interest-SART = interest in the sustained attention to response task; Interest-0B = interest in the 0-back task; Interest-1B = interest in the 1-back task

Fig. 2

a The parallel mediation model examining how motivation and focus back effort jointly mediated the relationship between interest and mind wandering. b The structural equation model investigating the sequential mediation of motivation and focus back effort in the association between interest and mind wandering. The contribution of each latent variable to the other is represented by a single-headed arrow from one latent variable (circle) to another. Solid paths indicate significant relationships at p < 0.05, while dotted lines indicate non-significant relationships at p < 0.05. To simplify the interpretation, the factor loadings of manifest variables have been excluded from the illustration and can be found in Additional file 1: Table S7

Fig. 3

Mediation effect paths of motivation, focus back effort (FBE), and mind wandering (MW) between interest and error in the sustained attention to response task (Model 3). The single-headed arrow from one (square) to another variable represents the effect of that variable on the other variable. All numbers appearing beside each arrow are standardized. All solid paths indicate significance at p < 0.05, while dotted lines indicate non-significant effects at p < 0.05

Fig. 4

Mediation effect paths of motivation, focus back effort (FBE), and mind wandering (MW) between interest and error in the 1-back task (Model 4). The single-headed arrow from one (square) to another variable represents the effect of that variable on the other variable. All numbers appearing beside each arrow are standardized. All solid paths are significant at p < 0.05 whereas all dotted lines are not significant at p < 0.05

Fig. 5

Mediation effect paths of motivation, focus back effort (FBE), and mind wandering (MW) between interest and reading comprehension (RC) in Study 2 (Model 5). The single-headed arrow from one (square) to another variable represents the effect of that variable on the other variable. All numbers appearing beside each arrow are standardized. All solid paths are significant at p < 0.05 whereas all dotted lines are not significant at p < 0.05