Does noise make minds wander while reading or listening?

Details

Researchers investigated whether greater perceptual processing difficulty affects mind wandering and text comprehension while reading or listening to a Sherlock Holmes novella. They presented 175 participants with the novella in either a visual or an auditory format and periodically probed their thoughts and motivational states during reading or listening. For half of the participants in each presentation-format condition, the story was superimposed with Gaussian noise.

In both formats, participants exposed to noise mind-wandered more and performed worse on a later comprehension test than those who processed the story without added noise. The negative effects of increased perceptual processing difficulty on task focus and comprehension were partly driven by motivational factors: motivation to read or listen mediated the relationship between perceptual processing difficulty and mind wandering.