Successful simulation requires bridging levels of abstraction.

Although many simulations draw upon only one level of abstraction, the process for generating rich simulations requires a dynamic interplay between abstract and concrete knowledge. A complete model of simulation must account for a mind and brain that can bridge the perceptual with the conceptual, the episodic with the semantic, and the concrete with the abstract.

Why do we think? The dynamics of spontaneous thought reveal its functions.

Spontaneous thought-mind wandering, daydreaming, and creative ideation-makes up most of everyday cognition. Is this idle thought, or does it serve an adaptive function? We test two hypotheses about the functions of spontaneous thought: First, spontaneous thought improves memory efficiency. Under this hypothesis, spontaneous thought should prioritize detailed, vivid episodic simulations. Second, spontaneous thought helps us achieve our goals. Under this hypothesis, spontaneous thought should prioritize content relevant to ongoing goal pursuits, or current concerns. We use natural language processing and machine learning to quantify the dynamics of thought in a large sample (N = 3,359) of think aloud data. Results suggest that spontaneous thought both supports memory optimization and keeps us focused on current concerns.

The people around you are inside your head: Social context shapes spontaneous thought.

Humans are highly social. We spend most of our time interacting with the social world, and we spend most of our thoughts thinking about the social world. Are we social beings by default, or is our sociality a response to the social world? On the one hand, fundamental social needs may drive social behavior. According to this account, social thoughts fulfill social needs when the environment is insufficiently social. On the other hand, spontaneous thoughts may process incoming information. According to this account, social thoughts reflect the social information in the environment. To arbitrate between these possibilities, we assessed the content of spontaneous thought during mind wandering in three social contexts: solitude (Study 1), social presence (Study 2), and social interaction (Study 3). Additionally, in Study 1, we used functional neuroimaging to measure neural activity while participants considered social and nonsocial targets. Results consistently showed that spontaneous thought reflects the sociality of the world around us: Solitude decreased spontaneous social thought and decreased neural activity in the mentalizing network when thinking about a close friend. Social presence did not change spontaneous social thought. Social interaction increased spontaneous social thought. Finally, individual differences analyses (Study 4) showed that people in more social environments have more social thoughts. Together, the results show a pattern of increasing social thought in increasingly social environments. The predominance of social content in spontaneous thought can thus be explained by the predominance of social content in the world around us, rather than our innate, fundamental social needs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Spontaneous Thought as an Unconstrained Memory Process.

The stream of thought can flow freely, without much guidance from attention or cognitive control. What determines what we think about from one moment to the next? Spontaneous thought shares many commonalities with memory processes. We use insights from computational models of memory to explain how the stream of thought flows through the landscape of memory. In this framework of spontaneous thought, semantic memory scaffolds episodic memory to form the content of thought, and drifting context modulated by one's current state - both internal and external - constrains the area of memory to explore. This conceptualization of spontaneous thought can help to answer outstanding questions such as: what is the function of spontaneous thought, and how does the mind select what to think about?

People represent their own mental states more distinctly than those of others.

One can never know the internal workings of another person-one can only infer others' mental states based on external cues. In contrast, each person has direct access to the contents of their own mind. Here, we test the hypothesis that this privileged access shapes the way people represent internal mental experiences, such that they represent their own mental states more distinctly than the states of others. Across four studies, participants considered their own and others' mental states; analyses measured the distinctiveness of mental state representations. Two fMRI studies used representational similarity analyses to demonstrate that the social brain manifests more distinct activity patterns when thinking about one's own states vs. others'. Two behavioral studies complement these findings, and demonstrate that people differentiate between states less as social distance increases. Together, these results suggest that we represent our own mind with greater granularity than the minds of others.

Creative expertise is associated with transcending the here and now.

Human imagination is bounded. As situations become more distant in time, place, perspective, and likelihood, they also become more difficult to simulate. What underlies the ability to successfully engage in distal simulations? Here we examine the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying distal simulation by studying individuals known for transcending these limits: creative experts. First, 2 behavioral studies establish that creative experts indeed succeed at engaging in vivid distal simulations, compared to less creative individuals. Performance on a traditional measure of creativity (Study 1) and real-world success in creative pursuits (Study 2) corresponded with more vivid distal simulations across temporal, spatial, social, and hypothetical domains. Study 3 used neuroimaging to identify the neural mechanism supporting creative experts' simulation success. Whereas creative experts and controls recruit the same neural mechanism (the medial prefrontal cortex) while simulating common or proximal events, creative experts preferentially engage a distinct neural mechanism (the dorsomedial subsystem of the default network) while simulating distal events. Moreover, creative experts showed greater functional connectivity within this network at rest, suggesting they may be prepared to engage this mechanism, by default. Studying creative expertise provides new insight into the ability to mentally transcend the here and now. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).