A functional trade-off between executive control and implicit statistical learning is dynamically gated by mind wandering

Abstract

Human cognition must balance goal-directed behavior with the need to learn from environmental regularities. Mind wandering (MW), a state of attentional decoupling from the task at hand, is paradoxically associated with both executive failures and enhanced implicit statistical learning, yet the direct relationship between these phenomena remains unclear. Here, we provide direct behavioral evidence for a functional trade-off between these competing demands. Using a task that concurrently measured response inhibition, statistical learning, and self-reported task focus, we show that MW is associated with impaired inhibitory control but enhanced learning of probabilistic sequences. Critically, we reveal that these effects are related: the magnitude of the learning enhancement during MW depends on the efficacy of response inhibition. These findings demonstrate that transient lapses in top-down executive control are associated with the enhanced implicit extraction of environmental statistics, supporting neurocompetition models, and framing MW as a cognitive state that may be evolutionarily preserved to promote the unsupervised acquisition of predictive models.