SynthesisPsychonomic bulletin & review2023
The relationship between mind wandering and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Eye-movement markers of mind wandering during reading: A meta-analysis.Memory & cognition · 2026Pooled it
- Mind wandering during first- and foreign-language reading.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Peer relations and motivation in special secondary education: Experiences of adolescents with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.The British journal of educational psychology · 2025Article
- Demotivated, but still attentive: Text disfluency does not affect mind-wandering and reading comprehension, but reduces motivation.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Mind Wandering during Implicit Learning Is Associated with Increased Periodic EEG Activity and Improved Extraction of Hidden Probabilistic Patterns.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- In-lecture quizzes improve online learning for university and community college students.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Mind-wandering when studying valuable information: The roles of age, dispositional traits, and contextual factors.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
- Distractions in digital reading: a meta-analysis of attentional interference effects.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Interactions of Decoding, Working Memory, and Mind Wandering on Reading Comprehension.Reading psychology · 2025Article
- Mind wandering may both promote and impair learning.Memory & cognition · 2024Article
- When there is noise on Sherlock Holmes: mind wandering increases with perceptual processing difficulty during reading and listening.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2023Article
- Investigating the protective effects of mindfulness-based attention training on mind wandering in applied settings.Frontiers in psychology · 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
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mind wandering (MW), a shift of attention away from external tasks toward internally generated thoughts, has been frequently associated with costs in reading comprehension (RC), although with some contrasting results and many reported potential intervening factors. The aim of the meta-analysis was to evaluate the relationship between MW and RC, considering the role of participants' and text's characteristics, as well as methodological issues in the measurement of the two constructs. From a set of 25 selected full texts (73 correlation coefficients), pooled correlation (r = -0.21) revealed a negative significant relationship. Using trait-based questionnaires to assess MW compared with online probes resulted in an average significant change of 0.30 in the correlation between MW and RC, leading to a null correlation. A significant effect of age was also found, with more negative correlations with increasing age. None of the other moderating variables considered (i.e., language, text type, text length, RC assessment, text difficulty, text interest, and working memory) resulted in a significant effect. From the present meta-analysis, we might suggest that MW and RC are partially overlapping and vary, within a swing effect, in relation to a set of shared factors, such as working memory, interest, and text length. There might also be side-specific factors that drive the movement of primarily one side of the swing, and future research should further consider the role of individual differences in RC. Implications for research and educational settings are discussed.
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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.