Trial reportActa psychologica2013
Aging ebbs the flow of thought: adult age differences in mind wandering, executive control, and self-evaluation.
Trial report in Acta psychologica, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Age differences in sustained attention tasks: A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Pooled it
- Inhibition in aging: What is preserved? What declines? A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2018Pooled it
- Effects of mindfulness training on sustained attention and mind-wandering in older adults: results from the HealthyAgers randomized controlled trial.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Trial
- Testing the differential effects of symptom management interventions in cancer.Psycho-oncology · 2015Trial
- Lapses of attention.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Are the correlates of mind wandering consistent across younger and older adults?Psychological research · 2026Article
- Further unpacking age-related differences in mind wandering: The roles of emotional valence and meta-awareness.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Using objective and subjective measures of mind wandering to predict progression to development of cognitive impairment and test associations with Alzheimer disease biomarkers.Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology · 2025Article
- Extending homeostasis to thought dynamics for a comprehensive explanation of mind-wandering.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Daily dynamics of the temporal orientations of mind wandering: chronotype matters!Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- Mind-wandering when studying valuable information: The roles of age, dispositional traits, and contextual factors.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
- Positively framing mind wandering does not increase mind wandering in older adults.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Listen up, kids! How mind wandering affects immediate and delayed memory in children.Memory & cognition · 2024Article
- Age-Related Differences in Mind Wandering: The Role of Emotional Valence.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Article
- The effect of video playback speed on learning and mind-wandering in younger and older adults.Memory (Hove, England) · 2023Article
- Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective.Psychological research · 2023Review
- How and for Whom Is Mobile Phone Addiction Associated with Mind Wandering: The Mediating Role of Fatigue and Moderating Role of Rumination.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Cognitive and non-cognitive variables influencing age-related effect of mind wandering across the adult life span.European journal of ageing · 2022Article
- A multimodal analysis of sustained attention in younger and older adults.Psychology and aging · 2022Article
- Predicting response time variability from task and resting-state functional connectivity in the aging brain.NeuroImage · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Two experiments examined the relations among adult aging, mind wandering, and executive-task performance, following from surprising laboratory findings that older adults report fewer task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) than do younger adults (e.g., Giambra, 1989; Jackson & Balota, 2012). Because older adults may experience more ability- and performance-related worry during cognitive tasks in the laboratory, and because these evaluative thoughts (known as task-related interference, "TRI") might be sometimes misclassified by subjects as task-related, we asked subjects to distinguish task-related thoughts from TRI and TUTs when probed during ongoing tasks. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults completed either a go/no-go or a vigilance version of a sustained attention to response task (SART). Older adults reported more TRI and fewer TUTs than did younger adults while also performing more accurately. In Experiment 2, subjects completed either a 1- or a 2-back version of the n-back task. Older adults again reported more TRI and fewer TUTs than younger adults in both versions, while performing better than younger adults in the 1-back and worse in the 2-back. Across experiments, older adults' reduced TUT rates were independent of performance relative to younger adults. And, although older adults consistently reported more TRI and less mind wandering than did younger adults, overall they reported more on-task thoughts. TRI cannot, therefore, account completely for prior reports of decreasing TUTs with aging. We discuss the implications of these results for various theoretical approaches to mind-wandering.
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Registered trials
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