An inventive interpretation of the staff’s findings created by a member of their lab who was not an writer of the paper. Credit score: Tatiana Pillsbury
Ideas that come up spontaneously when people usually are not intentionally making an attempt to think about one thing are identified to play a key position in decision-making and numerous cognitive capabilities, in addition to in some psychological well being problems. Actually, psychology research recommend that people recognized with numerous psychopathological problems, together with despair and nervousness problems, can expertise maladaptive spontaneous thought patterns, corresponding to overthinking or obsessing over particular issues, catastrophizing and ruminating about elements of life which can be difficult or painful.
Spontaneous ideas could be broadly divided into two classes, specifically “free” ideas, that are versatile and fluid, and “stuck” ideas, which are usually inflexible, repetitive or intrusive. Distinguishing between these various kinds of ideas will not be at all times simple, but it could possibly be helpful for the analysis and remedy of psychological well being problems.
Researchers at Emory College lately carried out a examine to raised perceive the spontaneous thought patterns skilled by completely different people utilizing a mix of experimental and computational strategies. Their findings, printed in Communications Psychology, recommend that there are 4 fundamental spontaneous thought sub-types with distinct traits.
“People spend up to 50% of their waking hours involuntarily thinking about task-unrelated topics (e.g., mind-wandering),” Marta Migó, first writer of the paper, informed Medical Xpress. “Because people are often not consciously aware of the whole content or length of these distracted thoughts, it has been challenging to gauge the impact of these thoughts on our mental health and/or cognition. However, if this mind-wandering includes a lot of negative thoughts about themselves, it could impact a person’s mental health.”
The principle goal of this latest examine by Migó and her colleagues was to color a clearer image of spontaneous trains of thought, shedding new mild on a few of their underlying dynamics. This might, in flip, assist to raised perceive how these considering patterns impression individuals’s persona, well being and perceptions.
“We attempted to measure the dynamics of spontaneous thought patterns by analyzing responses during a free word association task,” defined Michael T. Treadway, senior writer of the paper. “The free association task we used is similar to the technique that Sigmund Freud developed over a century ago.”
Throughout the free affiliation process that Migó, Treadway and their colleagues used of their experiments, contributors have been introduced with an preliminary phrase (e.g., partner) and have been requested to rapidly sort the primary phrase that got here into their thoughts in response to this phrase (e.g., wedding ceremony). Subsequently, they have been requested to sort the primary phrase they thought of in response to the reply they supplied, repeating this course of till they’d fashioned an 11-word chain.
“Participants would then start over with a new initial word, and this process was repeated 21 times,” stated Treadway. “As therapists have known for many decades, this process can be very revealing of an individual’s mental state. For example, we had individuals submitting positively-valenced chains, such as spouse, family, love, romance, book, etc., as well as participants submitting chains that were likely associated with more painful ideas like: spouse, cheater, divorce, betrayal, lonely, etc.”
Free affiliation duties have been extensively utilized by psychologists up to now as a method of finding out individuals’s considering patterns. But, in distinction with different groups, Migó, Treadway and their colleagues additionally mixed these duties with machine studying algorithms.
Process trial format. Credit score: Communications Psychology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00201-0
Particularly, the researchers used machine studying to research the 11-word strains created by contributors within the hope of higher understanding when and the way they moved from one phrase to a different. Firstly, they used a pure language processing (NLP) mannequin, which is designed to course of and generate human textual content to transform the phrases created by contributors right into a multi-dimensional navigational area.
“In this space, ‘free’ thought would present as random movement through this space, where individuals don’t stay in any one location for long,” defined Treadway. “In contrast, ‘stuck’ thought would be defined as the tendency to repeatedly navigate towards a topic or content location. This location would, hence, be like an attractor that continuously pulls one’s thoughts its way.”
Migó, Treadway and their colleagues lastly formalized the phrase sequence-related logic derived from NLP strategies right into a mathematical mannequin. This mannequin was then used to research the information they collected.
“Our findings revealed four categories of spontaneous thought that were differentially associated with self-reported mood and psychopathology,” stated Migó. “We identified a pattern akin to mind-wandering, one akin to protective positive thinking, and two akin to repetitive negative thinking. Notably, our model is among the first to capture thinking patterns that had previously only been theorized about.”
The free affiliation and machine learning-based experimental strategy employed by these researchers allowed them to raised perceive the psychological states of contributors at any given second, even those that have been unaware. The identical strategy might additionally examine different psychological processes linked to automated psychological associations, corresponding to cognitive biases.
“The knowledge we acquired could also be helpful when selecting participants for research studies, contextualizing findings, or knowing how to initiate sessions in clinical settings,” defined Migó. “Together, this work is another step towards better understanding our not consciously aware thinking and its heterogeneity.”
The latest findings gathered by Migó, Treadway and their colleagues supply new invaluable perception into a number of the patterns of spontaneous thought generally noticed in people. Sooner or later, the 4 spontaneous considering sub-types they uncovered could possibly be explored additional and will even be built-in into theoretical fashions of maladaptive considering patterns or therapeutic instruments aimed toward altering these patterns.
“Because treatment of repetitive negative thinking (like worry or rumination) does not prove effective for a considerable portion of the population, it is imperative that we work to better detect it, and understand its etiology, presentation, and consequences,” added Migó.
“Accordingly, we are now conducting additional studies to: (1) identify ruminative thought, and (2) understand goal-oriented deficits that may relate to the development and maintenance of these thinking patterns.”
Extra data:
Marta Migó et al, Spontaneous thought separates into clusters of unfavourable, constructive, and versatile considering, Communications Psychology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00201-0.
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