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Diede, Nathaniel T., Gyurkovics, Máté 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4483-3736, Nicosia, Jessica, Diede, Alex and Bugg, Julie M.
(2022)
The effect of context on mind-wandering in younger and older adults.
Consciousness and Cognition, 97.
ISSN 1053-8100
Abstract
Older adults report less mind-wandering (MW) during tasks of sustained attention than younger adults. The control failure × current concerns account argues that this is due to age differences in how contexts cue personally relevant task-unrelated thoughts. For older adults, the university laboratory contains few reminders of their current concerns and unfinished goals. For younger adults, however, the university laboratory is more directly tied to their current concerns. Therefore, if the context for triggering current concerns is the critical difference between younger and older adults’ reported MW frequencies, then testing the two groups in contexts that equate the salience of self-relevant cues (i.e., their homes) should result in an increase in older but not younger adults’ MW rates. The present study directly compared rates of MW and involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) in the home versus in the lab for younger and older adults using a within-subjects manipulation of context. Inconsistent with the control failure × current concerns account, no significant reduction in the age-gap in MW was found. Suggesting a lack of cues rather than an abundance of cues elicits MW, participants in both age groups reported more MW in the lab than at home. The number of IAMs recalled did not differ across contexts but was lower in older than younger adults. These findings suggest that a cognitive rather than an environmental mechanism may be behind the reduction in spontaneous cognition in aging.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Funding Information: Portions of these data were presented at the 2018 Cognitive Aging Conference and as part of NTD’s dissertation. The authors would like to thank Marisel Ponton, Jordyn Isikow, and Yujin Seo for their assistance in data collection. NTD was supported by an NIA Training Grant (T32AG000030-40) and the Psychological & Brain Sciences Department Dissertation Grant. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Inc. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | aging,cognitive control,context,current concerns,inhibitory deficit,involuntary autobiographical memories,mind-wandering,experimental and cognitive psychology,developmental and educational psychology,2* ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3205 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Aug 2024 15:30 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Oct 2024 00:52 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/96256 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.concog.2021.103256 |
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