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. 2013 Oct 16:4:742.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00742. eCollection 2013.

Can mind-wandering be timeless? Atemporal focus and aging in mind-wandering paradigms

Jonathan D Jackson  1 , Yana Weinstein, David A Balota
Affiliations

Can mind-wandering be timeless? Atemporal focus and aging in mind-wandering paradigms

Jonathan D Jackson et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Recent research has examined how often mind-wandering occurs about past vs. future events. However, mind-wandering may also be atemporal, although previous investigations of this possibility have not yielded consistent results. Indeed, it is unclear what proportion of mind-wandering is atemporal, and also how an atemporal response option would affect the future-oriented bias often reported during low-demand tasks used to measure mind-wandering. The present study examined self-reported (Experiment 1) and probe-caught (Experiment 2) mind-wandering using the low-demand Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) in younger (18-30) and older (50-73) adults in an experimental paradigm developed to measure mind-wandering using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (Mturk). Across self-reported and probe-caught mind-wandering, the atemporal response option was used at least as frequently as past or future mind-wandering options. Although older adults reported far fewer mind-wandering events, they showed a very similar temporal pattern to younger adults. Most importantly, inclusion of the atemporal report option affected performance on the SART and selectively eliminated the prospective bias in self-reported mind-wandering, but not in probe-caught mind-wandering. These results suggest that both young and older participants are often not thinking of past or future events when mind-wandering, but are thinking of events that cannot easily be categorized as either.

Keywords: SART; aging; mind-wandering; prospection; retrospection; task-unrelated thought; temporal focus.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Raw counts of past- and future-oriented mind-wandering for younger adults (panel A) and older adults (panel B) with and without the atemporal in Experiment 1. For participants with the atemporal option, counts for that response option are also shown. Error bars on all figures represent 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Proportions of past- and future-oriented mind-wandering for younger adults (panel A) and older adults (panel B) with and without the atemporal in Experiment 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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