Jelle Bruineberg and Regina Fabry’s reply to commentaries on ‘Extended Mind-Wandering’

We are very grateful to Jesper Aagaard, Gloria Andrada, Lucy Osler and Jennifer Windt for providing such insightful questions, suggestions, and considerations on our paper.  The commentaries address two themes: a set of conceptual questions about the descriptive and normative dimensions of extended mind-wandering, and a set of questions about …

What is it like to engage in extended mind wandering?

Jelle Bruineberg and Regina Fabry invite us to welcome a new member into the mind wandering family: extended mind wandering (EMW), of which their central example is habitual, diversionary smartphone use. Their proposal builds upon second-wave extended mind theories and mind wandering (MW) research. Adopting Seli and colleagues’ (2018) family …

Extended mind-wandering and cognitive rail-roading

In their paper “Extended Mind-Wandering”, Jelle Bruineberg and Regina E. Fabry suggest that habitual smartphone use can be conceptualised as a form of extended mind-wandering that should be included in the mind-wandering family. In doing so, they helpfully expand the category of mind-wandering, while also bringing non-task related cognitive processes …

Extended Mind-Wandering or Mind Invasion?

I am very much convinced by Bruineberg and Fabry’s idea that we can engage in episodes of extended mind-wandering, i.e. episodes of mind-wandering that are partly constituted by our interactions with certain artifacts. I have also felt compelled by their project, and agree with their call to investigate task-unrelated and …

Naming and Framing: On the Concept of Extended Mind-Wandering

Jelle Bruineberg and Regina E. Fabry (BF) start their paper on extended mind-wandering by denouncing two insidious biases in extended mind research: The harmony bias and the cognitive task bias. Steering clear of these biases means acknowledging that a) not all technology use is cognitively enhancing and b) not all human activity is …

Précis of Extended Mind-Wandering

Have you ever scrolled through a social media feed on your smartphone without a particular purpose or goal? Were you trying to focus on something else, like listening to a talk, or did you have a few moments to spare, such as when waiting for a train? Did you initiate …

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