Daydream

Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which participants spend 47% of their waking time on average on daydreaming. There are various names of this phenomenon including mind wandering, fantasy, spontaneous thoughts, etc. Daydreaming is the term used by Jerome L. Singer whose research programs laid the foundation for nearly all the subsequent research in this area today. The list of terminologies assigned by researchers today puts challenges on identifying the common features of the phenomenon, in this case daydreaming, and on building collective work among researchers. Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which participants spend 47% of their waking time on average on daydreaming. There are various names of this phenomenon including mind wandering, fantasy, spontaneous thoughts, etc. Daydreaming is the term used by Jerome L. Singer whose research programs laid the foundation for nearly all the subsequent research in this area today. The list of terminologies assigned by researchers today puts challenges on identifying the common features of the phenomenon, in this case daydreaming, and on building collective work among researchers. There are many types of daydreams, and there is no consistent definition amongst psychologists, however the characteristic that is common to all forms of daydreaming meets the criteria for mild dissociation. Also, the impacts of different types of daydreams are not identical. While some are disruptive and deleterious, others may be beneficial in some way. In the recent research, identified costs of daydreaming outnumber the potential benefits. Mooneyham and Schooler reviewed studies published from 1995 and found 29 studies related to costs compared to only 6 recent studies arguing functional benefits of daydreaming. Some of the major costs of daydreaming summarized by the review are associated with performances such as reading, sustained attention, mood, etc. The negative effects of daydreaming on reading performance have been studied the most thoroughly. Research shows that there is a negative correlation between daydreaming frequency and reading comprehension performance. To be specific, there are costs associated with daydreaming during reading and the costs include deficits of item-specific comprehension and model-building ability. Negative mood is another consequence of daydreaming. Research finds people generally report to be less happy when they are daydreaming than when they are not even the activities they otherwise do are the least enjoyed by them. For the positive daydreaming, people report the same happiness rating between current tasks and pleasant things they are more likely to daydream about. This finding remains true across all activities. The important relationship between mood and daydreaming from time-lag analysis is that the latter comes first, not the other way round. For more examples, in the late 19th century, Toni Nelson argued that some daydreams with grandiose fantasies are self-gratifying attempts at 'wish fulfillment'. Still in the 1950s, some educational psychologists warned parents not to let their children daydream, for fear that the children may be sucked into 'neurosis and even psychosis'. While the cost of daydreaming is more thoroughly discussed, the associated benefit is understudied. one potential reason is the payoff of daydreaming is usually private and hidden compared to the measurable cost from external goal-directed tasks. It's hard to know and record people's private thoughts such as personal goals and dreams, so whether daydreaming supports these thoughts is difficult to discuss. In recent studies, Immordino et al. identified a seemingly hidden but important benefits of daydreaming. They argued that mind is not idle during daydreaming though it's at rest when not attentively engaging in external tasks. Rather, during this process, people indulge themselves in and reflect on fantasies, memories, future goals and psychological selves while still being able to control enough attention to keep easy tasks going and monitor the external environment. Thus, the potential benefits are the skills of internal reflection developed in daydreaming to connect emotional implication of daily life experience with personal meaning building process. Despite the deleterious impact of daydreaming on aptitude tests which most educational institutions put heavy emphasis on, Immrdino et al. argued that it's actually important for children to get the internal reflection skills from daydreaming. Research shows that children quipped with theses skills have higher academic ability and are socioemotionally better off. Also, when the external environment demands overly high attention from children, it's reasonable to believe these useful skills are underdeveloped.