daydream là gì

Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts đồ sộ a more personal and internal direction. When thoughts move đồ sộ a different place while daydreaming it’s referred đồ sộ as mind wandering. This commonality affects individuals 50% of the time while awake.^[1] Daydreaming is the term used by Jerome L. Singer whose research laid the foundation for nearly all the subsequent research today. The terminologies assigned by researchers today puts challenges on identifying the common features of daydreaming, and on building collective work among researchers.^[2]

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There are many types of daydreams, and there is no consistent definition among psychologists. However, the characteristic that is common đồ sộ all forms of daydreaming meets the criteria for mild dissociation.^[3] Also, the impacts of different types of daydreams are not identical. While some are disruptive and deleterious, others may be beneficial in some way.^[4]

Functions of daydreaming[edit]

Mooneyham and Schooler summarized five potential functions daydreaming serves: future thinking, creative thinking, attentional cycling, dishabituation and relief from boredom.^[4]

Daydreaming can be a useful tool đồ sộ help keep people mindful of their relevant goals, such as imagining future success of a goal đồ sộ motivate accomplishing a difficult or uninteresting task.^[5]

Creative thinking is another function of daydreaming associated with increased creativity.^[6] The frequency of daydreaming is the highest during undemanding and easy tasks.^[7] It is hypothesized that daydreaming plays an important role in generating creative problem-solving processes.^[4] Studies have also found that intentional daydreaming is more effective when focused on creative thought processing, rather phàn nàn spontaneous or disruptive daydreams.^[5]

Attentional cycling is an adaptive function of daydreaming that helps đồ sộ keep people's behaviors relatively optimal when there are multiple target problems at the same time. When people have many goals, daydreaming provides an opportunity for people đồ sộ switch among different streams of information and thoughts.^[4]

Dishabituation is beneficial when the internal response đồ sộ the external stimulus decreases as the external stimulus repeats during learning process. One research identified this effect in learning and showed that learning is more effective with distributed practices rather phàn nàn massed practices.^[8] Daydreaming can provide the opportunity đồ sộ allow thoughts đồ sộ drift away from intensive learning temporarily and đồ sộ focus again with the refreshed capability đồ sộ continue focusing on attention-demanding tasks.^[4]

Relief from boredom is another function of daydreaming. When people are doing boring tasks, daydreaming allows their thoughts đồ sộ detach from current external tasks đồ sộ relieve boredom. At the same time, this temporary detachment will not stop external activities completely when these activities are necessary. Also, daydreaming can cause the perception that time moves more quickly.^[4]

Daydreaming can also be used đồ sộ imagine social situations. Humans are naturally oriented đồ sộ be social in behavior and actively seek the approval and company of others. Social daydreaming is imagining past social occurrences and future events and conversations.^[9] According đồ sộ research, daydreaming and social cognition have strong overlapping similarities when activated portions of the brain are observed.^[10][11] These findings indicate that daydreaming is an extension of the brain's experience of social cognition. This is likely because daydreams are often focused on the mental representations of social events, experiences, and people. It was also observed that a large portion of implicitly occurring daydreams, approximately 71%, were social.^[12] According đồ sộ recent research, it was also found that positive rumination caused increases in the imagining of positive future events. Negative rumination caused an increase in thoughts of negative future events in depressed individuals but did not cause a significant increase in thoughts of negative future events in those who were not depressed.^[13]

Default mode network[edit]

According đồ sộ several studies, daydreaming appears đồ sộ be the brain's mặc định setting when no other external task is occupying its attention. A group of regions in the brain called the mặc định mode network is lit up only when the brain is left in a sort of ‘idle’ state. These areas of the brain light up in sequence only when daydreaming.^[14][10]

Functional theories[edit]

There has yet đồ sộ be a consensus on how the process of mind wandering occurs.^[15] Three theories have been devised đồ sộ explain the occurrences and reasons behind why people daydream. These theories are the distractibility trương mục, executive-function trương mục, and the decoupling trương mục.^[16]

The distractibility trương mục theorizes that distracting stimulus, whether internal or external, reflects a failure đồ sộ disregard or control distractions in the mind.^[17] According đồ sộ this theory, the brain activity increases in response đồ sộ an increase in attention đồ sộ mind-wandering and the mind tends đồ sộ dwell on task unrelated thoughts (TUT's).^[16]

The executive-function trương mục theorizes that the mind fails đồ sộ correctly process task relevant events. This theory is based on the observation of TUT causes an increase in errors regarding task focused thinking, especially tasks requiring executive control.^[15][16]

The decoupling trương mục suggests that attention becomes removed, or decoupled, from perceptual information involving an external task, and couples đồ sộ an internal process. In this process, TUT is enhanced as internal thoughts are disengaged from surrounding distractions as the participant ‘tunes out’ the surrounding environment.^[16][17]

Psychological studies[edit]

Freudian psychology interpreted daydreaming as expression of the repressed instincts similarly đồ sộ those revealing themselves in nighttime dreams. He pointed out that, in contrast đồ sộ nighttime dreams, there seems đồ sộ be a process of "secondary revision" in fantasies that makes them more lucid, lượt thích daydreaming. The state of daydreaming is a kind of liminal state between waking (with the ability đồ sộ think rationally and logically) and sleeping.^[18]

In the late 1960s, cognitive psychologists Jerome L. Singer of Yale University and John S. Antrobus of the City College of Thành Phố New York, created a daydream questionnaire, called the Imaginal Processes Inventory (IPI). It has been used đồ sộ investigate daydreams. Psychologists Leonard Giambra and George Huba used the IPI and found that daydreamers' imaginary images vary in three ways: how vivid or enjoyable the daydreams are, how many guilt- or fear-filled daydreams they have, and how "deeply" into the daydream people go.^[3]

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Humanistic psychology on other hand, found numerous examples of people in creative or artistic careers, such as composers, novelists and filmmakers, developing new ideas through daydreaming. Similarly, research scientists, mathematicians and artists have developed new ideas by daydreaming about their subject areas.^[19]

Self-reflection[edit]

Daydreaming can also be used đồ sộ reveal personal aspects about an individual. In an experiment directed by Robert Desoille, Desoille had a subject rest on a couch and then invited them đồ sộ daydream about a series of objects and events. The subjects were asked đồ sộ imagine a sword or vase first, then đồ sộ imagine climbing a mountain, and then ascending into space. The subject is then asked đồ sộ visualize a wizard, a witch, and a dragon. Subjects who imagine more details and sleek objects often see themselves as more useful and hold a belief they are capable of growth. Through the daydream, which can involve many fantastical elements, characteristics such as a fear of men or a desire đồ sộ subdue a selfish personality trait can be revealed.^[20]

Self-focused daydreaming can be beneficial/positive (i.e. a self-reflection) or detrimental/negative (i.e. a rumination).^[15] Rumination is over-thinking negative experiences from the past, and pessimistic views of the future; it generally increases negative mood-episodes, guilt, fear and poor attention controls^[13][15] Self-reflection generally increases happiness, anti-depressant thinking, rational planning, creativity, and positivism.^[15]

Research[edit]

Eric Klinger's research in the 1980s showed that most daydreams are about ordinary, everyday events and help đồ sộ remind us of mundane tasks. Klinger's research also showed that over 75% of workers in "boring jobs", such as lifeguards and truck drivers, use vivid daydreams đồ sộ "ease the boredom" of their routine tasks.^[3]

Israeli high school students who scored high on the Daydreaming Scale of the IPI had more empathy phàn nàn students who scored low. Some psychologists use the mental imagery created during their clients' daydreaming đồ sộ help gain insight into their mental state and make diagnoses.^[21][22]

Research with fMRI shows that brain areas associated with complex problem-solving become activated during daydreaming episodes.^[23][24]

Benefits and costs[edit]

Mooneyham and Schooler reviewed studies about daydreaming published from 1995. Some of the major costs of daydreaming summarized by the review are worse performances with reading, sustained attention, mood etc.^[4]

The negative consequences 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, specifically worsened item-specific comprehension and model-building ability.^[4]

Disruptive daydreams or spontaneous daydreaming is also characteristic of people with attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD).^[25][26]

Negative mood is another association of daydreaming. Research finds people generally report lower happiness when they are daydreaming phàn nàn when they are not. For the positive daydreaming, people report the same happiness rating between current tasks and pleasant things they are more likely đồ sộ daydream about. This finding remains true across all activities. The relationship between mood and daydreaming from time-lag analysis is that the latter comes first.^[4]

In the late 19th century, Toni Nelson argued that some daydreams with grandiose fantasies are self-gratifying attempts at "wish fulfillment". In the 1950s, some educational psychologists warned parents not đồ sộ let their children daydream, for fear that the children may be sucked into "neurosis and even psychosis".^[3]

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 đồ sộ the measurable cost from external goal-directed tasks. It is hard đồ sộ know and record people's private thoughts such as personal goals and dreams, ví whether daydreaming supports these thoughts is difficult đồ sộ discuss.^[2]

Immordino et al. identified a benefit of daydreaming. They argued that the mind is not idle during daydreaming, though it is 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 đồ sộ control enough attention đồ sộ keep easy tasks going and monitor the external environment. Thus, the potential benefits are the skills of internal reflection developed in daydreaming đồ sộ connect emotional implication of daily life experience with personal meaning building process.^[27]

Despite the detrimental impact of daydreaming on aptitude tests which most educational institutions put heavy emphasis on, Immrdino et al. argued that it is important for children đồ sộ get internal reflection skills from daydreaming. Research shows that children equipped with these skills have higher academic ability and are socially and emotionally better off.^[27]

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See also[edit]

• Creative visualization
• Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming
• Fantasy prone personality
• Fantasy (psychology)
• Maladaptive daydreaming
• Mind-wandering
• Stream of consciousness (psychology)

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Psychology Today blog on Power of Daydreaming by Amy Fries
• Daydreams at Work: Wake-Up Your Creative Powers by Amy Fries
• Positive effects of daydreaming
• Daydreaming improves thinking (Cosmos Magazine)
• Site summarising research on mind-wandering and daydreaming