Task-unrelated thought increases after consumption of COVID-19 and general news

Hart, Chelsie M.; Mills, Caitlin; Thiemann, Raela F.; Andrews-Hanna, Jessica R.; Tomfohr-Madsen, Lianne; Kam, Julia W. Y.

doi:10.1186/s41235-022-00420-7

Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications

Table 3 Ecological momentary assessment survey questions

Survey question	Response options
What is your current task?	(Fill in response)
How easy or difficult was this task?	Extremely easy Somewhat easy Moderate Somewhat difficult Extremely difficult
How interesting did you find the task?	Not interesting at all Somewhat interesting Moderately interesting Very interesting Extremely interesting
How motivated were you to do the task?	Not motivated at all Somewhat motivated Moderately motivated Very motivated Extremely motivated
How on-task (task-related) or off-task (task-unrelated) was your thought?	Completely on-task Somewhat on-task Somewhat off-task Extremely off-task
Please check all the topics that your thought involved. ^a	Pandemic-related health concerns of yourself or loved ones Uncertainty about pandemic-related financial/job concerns Concerns about way of life after pandemic Other pandemic-related concerns Concrete steps toward achieving a goal Fantastical musings not grounded in reality Other
Did your thought occur intentionally (under your control) or unintentionally (outside of your control)?	Unintentionally Intentionally
How aware were you of the contents of your thought?	Not aware at all Somewhat unaware Moderately aware Very aware Extremely aware
Was your thought oriented toward the external environment, your inner world, or a bodily sensation?	External environment Inner world Bodily sensations
Where in time was your thought focused?	Past Present Future No particular time
Was your mind freely moving from one thought to another, or focused on a specific topic? This question pertains to your thoughts occurring in the past few minutes	Very focused on one topic Somewhat focused on one topic Somewhat freely moving from one thought to another Very much freely moving from one thought to another Extremely freely moving from one thought to another
How positive or negative do you feel at this moment?	Extremely negative Somewhat negative Neutral Somewhat positive Extremely positive
Have you read, listened to, or watched (COVID-19-related news/the news) in the last two hours? ^b	Yes No
How did the news make you feel? (Reverse coded.) ^c	Positive Neutral Negative
What was the news about? ^c	COVID-19-related topics Other health-related topics Natural disaster Politics Economy Sports Popular culture Other
Where did you obtain the news? ^c	Newsprint/website Radio Television/Online Video Social Media

Note In the current study, we focused only on the items that were relevant to our primary research question: task-unrelated thought ratings (question 5a), news consumption (question 12a), and motivation ratings (question 4). The other questions were intended to address different research questions that are not relevant to the current study. For instance, in a previous paper (Kam et al., 2021), we examined affective valence. The remaining items on the survey were used for piloting purposes and were not included in the analyses. Responses are numbered for questions where responses were considered on a Likert scale. For each ecological momentary assessment probe, questions and responses were presented to participants in the same order shown, but without numerical coding for the responses
^aParticipants were only asked about the topics of their thoughts if they rated their thoughts as somewhat or extremely off-task
^bFor Study 1, this question asked about COVID-19-related news. For Study 2, this question asked about news in general
^cThese questions were only presented in Study 2

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