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I've been reading a paper by Jarmasz J. (2005) on cognitive tunneling and am wondering if it applies to daydreaming?

For instance, if for some reason I'm already thinking about something that has no relation to any information coming in from any of my senses, just some random thought, will this cause any new information coming in from these senses to potentially not be processed?

This is kind of related to my understanding of HIP( human information processing ). I've recently seen a diagram of HIP where what is in working memory is either information from our senses that we are attending to and information from long term memory.

But where does random thoughts that we have through out the day come in? This has to be accounted for as well, I would think.

Jarmasz, J., Herdman, C.M. & Johannsdottir, K.R. (2005). Object-based attention and cognitive tunneling. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 11, 3.

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cognitive capture/tunneling is inherently about being too focused on instrumentation instead of the environment they are suppose to correspond to. How is daydreaming related to external instruments? As far as I can tell the paper you cite and the concept of cognitive tunneling is completely disconnected from the rest of your question. Thus, it is not at all clear to me what you are asking. Are you just asking what causes inattention? Or how day-dreaming fits into cognitive-science? – Artem Kaznatcheev Oct 6 '12 at 3:06
I totally understand the confusion. I should of stated the question as, how does day-dreaming effect short term memory or as you put it, how does it fit into cognitive science? – Joey Green Oct 9 '12 at 1:04
I feel that day-dreaming should take away some of our short-term memory resources, but I don't know if this is true or not. – Joey Green Oct 9 '12 at 1:05

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