ReviewPsychological research2023
Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective.
Review in Psychological research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
9 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
- Are the correlates of mind wandering consistent across younger and older adults?Psychological research · 2026Article
- Task difficulty modulates the effect of mind wandering on phase dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Positively framing mind wandering does not increase mind wandering in older adults.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Childhood adversity and mind wandering: the mediating role of cognitive flexibility and habitual tendencies.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2024Article
- Cross-cultural adaptation of the Mind-Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) for Brazilian Portuguese and evidence of its validity.Revista brasileira de psiquiatria (Sao Paulo, Brazil : 1999) · 2024Article
- Mind wandering is not always harmful in sports: the role of its content.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- External task switches activate default mode regions without enhanced processing of the surrounding scene.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 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
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mind wandering is a universal phenomenon in which our attention shifts away from the task at hand toward task-unrelated thoughts. Despite it inherently involving a shift in mental set, little is known about the role of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering. In this article we consider the potential of cognitive flexibility as a mechanism for mediating and/or regulating the occurrence of mind wandering. Our review begins with a brief introduction to the prominent theories of mind wandering-the executive failure hypothesis, the decoupling hypothesis, the process-occurrence framework, and the resource-control account of sustained attention. Then, after discussing their respective merits and weaknesses, we put forward a new perspective of mind wandering focused on cognitive flexibility, which provides an account more in line with the data to date, including why older populations experience a reduction in mind wandering. After summarizing initial evidence prompting this new perspective, drawn from several mind-wandering and task-switching studies, we recommend avenues for future research aimed at further understanding the importance of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering.
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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.