ArticleCognitive research: principles and implications2018
Mind-wandering rates fluctuate across the day: evidence from an experience-sampling study.
Article in Cognitive research: principles and implications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 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
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Relative Accuracy of Different Methods for Measuring Mind Wandering Subtypes: A Systematic Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- Lapses of attention.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Human movement patterns predict task-unrelated thought.PloS one · 2026Article
- Phenomenology of the stream of thought: dissociable dynamic dimensions revealed through experience sampling.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Hyperactive ADHD symptoms are associated with increased variability in thought content in less constrained contexts.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Electrophysiological signatures of ongoing thoughts during naturalistic behavior.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Daily dynamics of the temporal orientations of mind wandering: chronotype matters!Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- Time, valence, and imagination: a comparative study of thoughts in restricted and unrestricted mind wandering.Psychological research · 2024Article
- The role of focus back effort in the relationships among motivation, interest, and mind wandering: an individual difference perspective.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2023Article
- Collaborative Retrieval Practice Reduces Mind-Wandering During Learning.Experimental psychology · 2023Article
- The contribution of latent factors of executive functioning to mind wandering: an experience sampling study.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Mind-Wandering during Personal Music Listening in Everyday Life: Music-Evoked Emotions Predict Thought Valence.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Mind wandering at encoding, but not at retrieval, disrupts one-shot stimulus-control learning.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2021Article
- Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The Origins of Passive, Active, and Sleep-Related Fatigue.Frontiers in neuroergonomics · 2021Review
- Immediate Attention Enhancement and Restoration From Interactive and Immersive Technologies: A Scoping Review.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- A closer look at the timecourse of mind wandering: Pupillary responses and behaviour.PloS one · 2020Article
- The dynamics of memory retrieval for internal mentation.Scientific reports · 2019Article
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
Previous research has demonstrated reliable fluctuations in attentional processes during the course of the day. Everyday life experience sampling, during which participants respond to "probes" delivered at random intervals throughout the day on their mobile devices, is an effective tool for capturing such diurnal fluctuations in a naturalistic way. The existence of diurnal fluctuations in the case of mind-wandering, however, has not been examined to date. We did so in two studies. In the first study, we employed everyday experience sampling to obtain self-reports from 146 university students who rated the degree of free movement in their thoughts multiple times per day over five days. These time course data were analyzed using multilevel modelling. Freely moving thought was found to fluctuate reliably over the course of the day, with lower ratings reported in the early morning and afternoon and higher ratings around midday and evening. In the second study, we replicated these effects with a reanalysis of data from a past everyday experience-sampling study. We also demonstrated differences in parameter values for the models representing freely moving thought and two common conceptualizations of mind-wandering: task-unrelated thought and stimulus-independent thought. Taken together, the present results establish and replicate a complex pattern of change over the course of the day in how freely thought moves, while also providing further evidence that freedom of movement is dissociable from other dimensions of thought such as its task-relatedness and stimulus-dependence. Future research should focus on probing possible mechanisms behind circadian fluctuations of thought dynamics.
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.