Mind surfing: Attention in musical absorption

Abstract

Literature in the psychology of music and in cognitive psychology claims – paradoxically – that musical absorption includes processes of both focused attention and mind wandering. We examine this paradox and aim to resolve it by integrating accounts from cognitive psychology on attention and mind wandering with qualitative phenomenological research on some of the world’s most skilled musicians. We claim that a mode of experience that involves intense attention and what superficially seems like mind wandering is possible. We propose to grasp this different mode of experience with a new concept: “mind surfing”. We suggest that a conjoined consideration of attention’s intensive and selective capacities can partially explain how one can be both focused and freely “surfing” on a “musical wave” at the same time. Finally, we couple this novel and foundational work on attention with a 4E cognition account to show how music acts as an affective and cognitive scaffold, thereby enabling the surfing.