Attentional switch from external toward internal world: a psychophysiological marker

Anaïs Servais (1, 2) , Christophe Hurter (1) , Emmanuel J. Barbeau (2)

1 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
2 CERCO - Centre de recherche cerveau et cognition

Let’s have an experience. Read the following question and try to answer as sincerely as possible. Meanwhile, observe what’s going on in your mind. Here is the question: “What gift did you receive for Christmas?”. To answer this question, we need to create a temporary internal mental space to which our attention will focus (Tulving, 2002). This attentional switch from external towards internal mental world is commonly referred as mindwandering. Since attention is a limited resource, it cannot focus simultaneously on outside and inside worlds: while our attention is focused on our internal world, we are largely blind to external stimulations (Fernandes & Moscovitch, 2000). There is a perceptual decoupling (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006) which is one of the most threatening aspect of the mindwandering (Schooler et al., 2011).

Mots clés: fNIRS; Other measurement methods; EEG; Brain computer interfaces; Eye tracking

Domaines: Imagerie médicale; Synthèse d'image et réalité virtuelle [cs.GR]; Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]

Anaïs Servais, Christophe Hurter, Emmanuel J. Barbeau. Attentional switch from external toward internal world: a psychophysiological marker. 1st International Conference on Cognitive Aircraft Systems – ICCAS 2020, Mar 2020, Toulouse, France. ⟨10.34849/cfsb-t270⟩. ⟨hal-03641163⟩