ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences2024
Age-Related Differences in Mind Wandering: The Role of Emotional Valence.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of emotional valence of mind wandering on sustained attention performance.Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · 2025Pooled it
- Are the correlates of mind wandering consistent across younger and older adults?Psychological research · 2026Article
- Artificial Intelligence-Based Computerized Digit Vigilance Test in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Development and Validation Study.JMIR medical informatics · 2025Article
- Further unpacking age-related differences in mind wandering: The roles of emotional valence and meta-awareness.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Arousal and sustained attention fluctuate differently with respiration in younger and older adults.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Further unpacking individual differences in mind wandering: The role of emotional valence and awareness.Consciousness and cognition · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesOlder adults consistently report fewer experiences of mind wandering compared to younger adults. Aging is also associated with a shift in the emotional focus of our thoughts, with older adults tending to experience an increase in attention toward positive information, or a "positivity bias," relative to younger adults. Here, we tested if the positivity bias associated with aging can also predict age-related changes in the content of older adults' mind wandering.
methodOlder adults and younger adults completed a go/no-go task with periodic thought probes to assess rates of emotionally valenced mind wandering.
resultsOlder adults reported significantly less negatively and neutrally valenced mind wandering compared to younger adults, but there was no age difference in reports of positively valenced mind wandering. Overall rates of mind wandering predicted poorer task performance for both age groups: Individuals who mind wandered more, performed worse, but this did not differ by the emotional valence. Both older adults and younger adults showed similar in-the-moment performance deficits, with mind wandering reports being associated with worse immediate no-go accuracy and faster reaction times, consistent with mindless responding. DISCUSSION: Focusing on different dimensions of thought content, such as emotional valence, can provide new insight into age-related differences in mind wandering. Older adults' mind wandering reports were less negative and neutral compared to younger adults' reports suggesting a positivity bias for older adults. However, this positivity bias does not seem to affect task performance. We discuss the implications of the findings for mind wandering theories and the positivity bias.
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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.