Archive: https://archive.today/SEUor From the post: >>When the human mind drifts away from a specific task, it may actually improve the ability to absorb hidden patterns in the environment. A new study suggests that this mental wandering facilitates a passive type of learning even while it degrades active attention and execution. These findings appeared in The Journal of Neuroscience. The human brain possesses two distinct modes of processing information. One mode involves active, focused attention, which is necessary for executing precise commands or solving explicit problems. The other mode is more passive and automatic. This passive mode allows the brain to pick up on statistical regularities in the environment without conscious effort. This process is known as implicit or probabilistic learning. It is the mechanism by which infants learn the structure of language or by which adults develop intuition about complex social situations.