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 and when it is found in a digital artefact? These are some of the questions this monograph seeks to address.Being co-authored by a cognitive psychologist, a literary scholar, and a video game scholar, this book provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the topic of mind wandering and attention, focusing in particular on how these cognitive processes work in the reception of fictional worlds. Building on cutting-edge research on mind wandering and attention, this volume proposes a three-directional exchange, showing how this interdisciplinary dialogue can suggest previously unseen avenues of theoretical and empirical exploration of a subject which is attracting more and more attention in both scientific and non-scientific communities.This innovative book will appeal to scholars in such areas as cognitive science, literary studies, cognitive neuroscience, game studies, cognitive narratology, psychology, and narrative theory.