Mind-wandering during encoding impairs recognition for both forgettable and memorable complex scenes

Mind-wandering is an all-too-familiar experience for us all: the tendency for one’s attention to shift away from their external environment to an unrelated internal stream of thought. One consequence is that mind-wandering while studying visual stimuli impairs later recognition performance. Here, we examine how image memorability affects the typical reduction in recognition of images learned during mind-wandering episodes by investigating how spontaneous lapses in sustained attention affect recognition memory for highly memorable and forgettable scenes. Subjects (n = 60) viewed a set of either memorable or forgettable images (matched for low-level features and number of objects) and were intermittently probed for mind-wandering. After a digit span task, they completed an old/new memory test for the images intermixed with matched scene category foils. Linear regression analyses found that subjects who saw highly forgettable images exhibited lower hit rate (β = -0.087, p = 0.025), lower d-prime (β = -0.595, p = 0.020), and higher criterion (β = 0.181, p = 0.033), but non-different false alarm rate (β = 0.022, p = 0.414). Mind-wandering was associated with lower hit rate (β = -0.071, p = 0.002), lower d-prime (β = -0.586, p < 0.001), and lower false alarm rate (β = 0.050, p = 0.002), but not with criterion (β = 0.027, p = 0.558). Mind-wandering and memorability did not interact, suggesting that attention and memorability are independent predictors of recognition memory. Future work will explore the effects of conscious accessibility and foil memorability on adopted criterion thresholds during test.