Acceso usuarios
Alexander Soemer, Christian A. Gericke, Ulrich Schiefele
Educational research has emphasized a robust link between interest and attention across various learning activities. According to a widely recognized hypothesis, interest plays an important role in directing learners’ focus of attention to a learning activity rather than to task-unrelated activities such as mind wandering (MW). However, the currently available evidence leaves room for alternative possibilities. In particular, MW itself could influence interest, or both interest and MW could mutually influence each other during learning. We report on a study that addresses this ambiguity and examines the links between the two constructs, taking into account both situation-level and person-level differences. Participants first rated their topic interest after being given a brief preview of a text on that topic. They subsequently read the entire text, intermittently rating situational interest and reporting instances of MW. We found a significant association of situational interest at one point during reading with subsequent instances of MW, and a significant association of MW at one point during reading with subsequent situational interest, suggesting a reciprocal relation between the two constructs. In addition, differences in topic interest appeared to influence overall levels of situational interest during reading, whereas person-level differences in MW appeared to influence MW rates during reading. Finally, we also analyzed the contributions of topic interest and situational interest during reading to postreading situational interest and found a remarkable consistency between the variables. The results are discussed in relation to theories emphasizing a close relationship between interest and attention.
