The 3 differences between mental absence and temporary gap

We are absorbed in concern about a report that we have not finished and we begin to eat from the bag of snacks that we had next to the computer, to later not be sure of what or when exactly we have done. We leave our house and arrive at the workplace, and although we know we have gone there, we are not aware of how we got there.

We are not talking about some kind of amnesia, since we really do know what we were doing. We just weren't paying attention to what we were doing: we have experienced a mental absence in the first case, and a temporary gap in the second. They are similar phenomena, but they should not be confused. Let's see what they consist of.

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Attention

Defining and delimiting the concept of attention is relatively complex, given its close link with other mental capacities such as consciousness and memory. In general, we understand by attention to that capacity that allows us to be able to select, orient ourselves,

focus and blur our cognitive resources in such a way that they allow us to obtain information about the environment and about our own behavior, so that we can adapt to the environment.

It also allows us filter the stimuli we perceive and focus on the most important elements, avoiding distractions and not devoting mental resources to unnecessary details. Our attention span varies based on different circumstances such as the level of activation, motivation, emotion and cognition, as well as other environmental variables and even biological.

In some cases, our attention span can be altered, with phenomena such as mental absence and a temporal gap.

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Mental absence as a disturbance of attention

Mental absence is called the phenomenon by which our attentional capacity is fully focused and concentrated in the thoughts themselves or in a specific stimulus or task, in such a way that stimuli outside of them are neglected. A) Yes, not we process the media information as we normally would despite the fact that the capacity to do so remains intact, acting automatically.

It is what happens when we become absorbed in looking and thinking about something, even though we may be doing other tasks. In fact, it can be related to the concept of "flow status"used by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to define the mental state we enter when performing tasks that we are passionate about and present just the right degree of difficulty.

Mental absence makes it difficult for us to respond adaptively to outside stimulation. However, said absence is broken if the subject is made to disconnect from his thoughts or from the element in which he is fully concentrated causing external stimulation to increase, such as if someone calls us or a noise or light appears unexpected.

The temporary lagoon

A phenomenon that in principle may seem similar to the previous one and that is also an alteration of attention is the temporal gap. However, these are different phenomena.

The temporary lagoon relies heavily on automating tasks that we carry out: a temporary gap is considered to be that phenomenon that occurs when we are carrying out some type of more or less automated activity (especially if it is repetitive, easy or does not motivate and awakens us emotionality) without notable stimuli appearing during its performance that mobilize our attention and can help us to register time.

On the other hand, the temporary lagoon ends when we have to re-process information actively. The absence of something that marks the time makes us later not able to remember what exactly happened during the time that has elapsed. For example, if we work in a factory or drive home, we do everything so automatic that at a certain point we do not know what we have done.

Differences between temporal gap and mental absence

Both concepts may seem very similar, but in reality it is about different mental disorders. The main similarity is that in both cases the subject loses information due to attentional alterations, deriving specifically from it, understood as concentration capacity.

But the differences between mental absence and temporal gap are also perceptible. With regard to mental absence, it occurs when we are paying maximum attention to something and we lose information outside of it, but if they ask us, we do know what we were doing attending. It is more aware of what we have done.

In the temporary lagoon you have a feeling of memory loss (although it must be remembered that it is not an amnesia but a phenomenon related to attention), not being able to directly determine what has happened during a period of time (the gap itself). It does not have to be the cause of failures in the functioning of brain structures involved in memory, such as hippocampus.

Thus, the differences between mental absence and temporal gap are:

1. The focus or not on the stimulus

In mental absence, the alteration occurs because we direct all our attention to a very specific type of information, neglecting the rest. In the temporary lagoon there is no such type of targeting.

2. The degree of automation

The time gap occurs when we perform simple and repetitive actions, or that do not require us to concentrate on them. For example, walking to our usual workplace.

The opposite occurs in the case of mental absence, based on our way of concentrating on an interesting and complex task.

3. The feeling of memory loss

In mental absence, you do not have the feeling of not remembering relevant aspects, but this usually happens in the temporal gap.

Context of appearance: is it pathological?

Although they can be considered and are classified as abnormalities or alterations in attention, or mental absence nor the temporal lagoon are in themselves a pathological phenomenon.

Despite this, they can appear more frequently in different disorders or conditions, especially in the case of mental absence. It appears in disorders such as epilepsy, some food poisoning or psychoactive substances or after strokes or head injuries in which neuronal damage occurs in the nuclei that govern attention.

Some mental disorders in which they can appear frequently are ADHD, autism or other disorders such as depression or TOC. Also in disorders such as epilepsy and dementias and in situations such as sleep deprivation, altered consciousness or intense hunger.

Bibliographic references:

• Belloch, A.; Sandín, B. and Ramos, F. (2008), Manual of Psychopathology, Volume I. Madrid, McGraw-Hill.