ArticlePsychological research2019
Age-related changes in the temporal focus and self-referential content of spontaneous cognition during periods of low cognitive demand.
Article in Psychological research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Relative Accuracy of Different Methods for Measuring Mind Wandering Subtypes: A Systematic Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- In here and out there: Evidence that age-related differences in memory specificity are attenuated in natural social conversations.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2026Article
- Psychosomatic Features of Irritable Bowel Syndrome: The Role of Alexithymia in Patient Health-Related Quality of Life-A Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Age and Physical Activity Modulate the Spatial Mapping of Time-Related Words.Journal of cognition · 2026Article
- A primer on meta-awareness of mind wandering in schizotypy and schizophrenia.Psychological research · 2025Review
- Oscillations of the Wandering Mind: Neural Evidence for Distinct Exploration/Exploitation Strategies in Younger and Older Adults.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Psychological functioning of patients with type I diabetes: the relevant role of alexithymia and intolerance to uncertainty.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Daily dynamics of the temporal orientations of mind wandering: chronotype matters!Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- A novel scoring protocol reveals age-related differences in abstract compared to concrete thinking in cued autobiographical remembering.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Speaking Well and Feeling Good: Age-Related Differences in the Affective Language of Resting State Thought.Affective science · 2024Article
- State-related neural influences on fMRI connectivity estimation.NeuroImage · 2021Review
- The impact of social isolation and changes in work patterns on ongoing thought during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Validation study of the Italian version of Temporal Focus Scale: psychometric properties and convergent validity.BMC psychology · 2021Article
- The psychological correlates of distinct neural states occurring during wakeful rest.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- "All is not lost"-Rethinking the nature of memory and the self in dementia.Ageing research reviews · 2019Review
- Spontaneous future cognition: the past, present and future of an emerging topic.Psychological research · 2019Article
- Hello, is that me you are looking for? A re-examination of the role of the DMN in social and self relevant aspects of off-task thought.PloS one · 2019Article
- Aging and the wandering brain: Age-related differences in the neural correlates of stimulus-independent thoughts.PloS one · 2019Article
- The Functions of Prospection - Variations in Health and Disease.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
An intriguing aspect of human cognition is the unique capacity to mentally retreat from our immediate surroundings to consider perspectives distinct from the here and now. Despite increasing interest in this phenomenon, relatively little is known regarding age-related changes in off-task, self-generated thought (often referred to as "mind-wandering"), particularly under conditions of low cognitive demand. While a number of studies have investigated the temporal orientation of mind-wandering with increasing age, findings have been largely inconsistent. Here, we explored the frequency, temporal focus, and self-referential/social content of spontaneous task-unrelated, perceptually decoupled thought in 30 young and 33 healthy older adults using the Shape Expectations task, a validated experimental paradigm in which discrete facets of inner mentation are quantified along a conceptual continuum using open-ended report. Participants also completed the daydreaming subscale of the Imaginal Process Inventory (IPI) as a trait measure of mind-wandering propensity. Significant group differences emerged on the Shape Expectations task, with reduced instances of mind-wandering in the context of elevated task-related thoughts relative to younger adults. In terms of temporal focus, a preponderance of present/atemporal off-task thoughts was evident irrespective of group; however, significantly higher levels of future-oriented thoughts were provided by younger adults, contrasting with significantly higher instances of retrospection in the older group. In addition, older adults displayed significantly fewer incidences of self-referential cognition relative to their younger counterparts. Our findings indicate a distinct attenuation of off-task, self-generated thought processes with increasing age, with evidence for a shift in temporal focus and self-referential quality, during periods of low cognitive demand.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.