Mind Wandering, Attention, and the Reception of Fictional Worlds

Is a wandering mind just a defocused mind? Or can wandering also be a creative mental activity? What is the complex relationship between mind wandering and attention? How is this relationship articulated when we encounter a fictional world? And does our mind pay attention and wander in the same way when the encountered fictional world comes from a book versus a digital artefact? These are some of the questions this monograph seeks to address.

Co-authored by a cognitive psychologist, a literary scholar, and a video game scholar, this book provides an interdisciplinary perspective on mind wandering and attention, focusing on how these cognitive processes work in the reception of fictional worlds. Building on cutting-edge research, this volume proposes a three-directional exchange, showing how interdisciplinary dialogue can suggest previously unseen avenues of theoretical and empirical exploration.

This innovative book will appeal to scholars in cognitive science, literary studies, cognitive neuroscience, game studies, cognitive narratology, psychology, and narrative theory.