The impact of thought probes and other encoding interruptions on memory

Whenever we work towards completing a task, such as learning some information, we are susceptible to attentional lapses where our thoughts stray from the demands of the current task to something unrelated (i.e., mind-wandering). Although prior work indicates that the presence of mind-wandering probes (used to measure task-unrelated thoughts) in a cognitive task may not impact the measurement of abilities like processing speed, there could be reactive effects involving memory. We examined whether mind-wandering probes can impact memory by having participants study lists of words to remember for later tests; at pseudo-random intervals during encoding, participants either responded to mind-wandering probes, answered math problems, had unfilled interstimulus intervals, or studied the lists without any interruptions. Results revealed that mind-wandering probes (or other interruptions) do not significantly impact overall memory performance (though there may be some impact on items immediately preceding or following a probe) or the temporal dynamics of episodic memory. Thus, the present study suggests that using mind-wandering probes introduces minimal unexpected bias into research designs such that these interruptions do not adversely affect or benefit memory performance, consistent with prior research focused primarily on other cognitive domains.