The Study Of Mind Wandering In Aging

Mind wandering is a common but easy to overlook phenomenon, which reveals the individual’s consciousness is not always concentrated at the current environment or task, but often turn to the internal world. The development of mind wandering, especially mind wandering in aging is gradually arousing the research interest, such as the age-related change in the frequency of mind wandering. The study of mind wandering in aging, not only contributs to a better understanding of the development characteristics of mind wandering, but also to the understanding of cognitive decline in aging, and helps to improve the treatment of ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease and other diseases.In the research of mind wandering in aging, the most controversial is that whether old people’s minds wander more or less than the young. The current concern theory argues that the main content of mind wandering come from one’s goal-related concern. Old individuals have fewer concerns than younger individuals, so their minds wander less than younger individuals; executive control theory argues that mind wand-ering reflects the failure of the executive-control system, the old tend to have degraded executive control function, thus their minds should wander more than the younger adults. This dispute has not been resolved.In the present study, we used the subjective (questionnaires) and objective method(the behavior indicators such as attentional lapseduring task) to compare the frequencyof mind wandering in old and young people. Study1adopted SART and interview oncurrent concern interview and study2adopted reading task and survey on life event. And the results showed that:1) The older subjects reported less mind wandering than the younger ones;2) The old subjects’attentional lapse was not less than the young subjects;3) The attitude about mind wandering was correlated with the frequency of one’s reported mind wandering;4) The frequency of mind wandering was correlated to one’s negative current concern;...