Oops! is a web site dedicated to discovering the absent and wandering mind and some of its consequences.
In this site we provide examples, often entertaining, of mind-wandering and its consequences, some essays on inattention, and an opportunity to contribute to our understanding of the causes and consequences of mind-wandering.
The Daily Oops!
On May 6, 1984, the Los Angeles Lakers faced the Dallas Mavericks in Game Four of the NBA Western Conference semifinals. With six seconds left and the score tied, Dallas rookie Derek Harper rebounded the ball. Unfortunately Harper thought his team had a one point lead and, despite the desperate cries of his teammates (and 20,000 Mavericks fans), he triumphantly dribbled out the clock without even taking a shot at the basket. The Lakers won in overtime (122-115) and took the series in the next game.
How can you contribute to Oops!?
We have a number of questionnaires and behavioral assessments of attention and its failures, as well as a number of related measures. You can help us by participating in our research.
Anecdotal reports suggest that during periods of inattention or mind wandering, people tend to experience increased fidgeting. In four studies, we examined whether individual differences in the tendency to be inattentive and to mind wander in everyday life are related to the tendency to make spontaneous and involuntary movements...
Although objective measures of memory performance typically indicate memory declines with age, self-reported memory failures often show no relation to age. In contrast, self-reported attention failures are reliably negatively correlated with age. This contrast suggests...
In two studies of a GO–NOGO task assessing sustained attention, we examined the effects of (1) altering speed–accuracy trade-offs through instructions (emphasizing both speed and accuracy or accuracy only) and (2) auditory alerts distributed throughout the task...
Attention lapses resulting from reactivity to task challenges and their consequences constitute a pervasive factor affecting everyday performance errors and accidents. A bidirectional model of attention lapses (error <--> attention-lapse: Cheyne, Solman, Carriere, & Smilek, 2009) argues that errors beget errors by generating attention lapses; resource-depleting cognitions...
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