Children's mental time travel during mind wandering

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Prospective bias in mind wandering is documented in adults.
• Limited understanding of temporal focus in children's mind wandering.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the temporal focus of mind wandering in school-age children.
• To develop and validate a questionnaire for assessing temporal focus in children's mind wandering.
• To examine the relationship between mind wandering, task demands, and cognitive performance.

Main Methods:

• Development of the Temporal Focus of Mind Wandering Questionnaire for Children (TFMWQ-C).
• Criterion validity assessed using thought sampling during choice reaction time and working memory tasks.
• Analysis of future-oriented versus past-oriented task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs).

Main Results:

• The TFMWQ-C demonstrated good reliability and construct validity.
• A positive correlation was found between questionnaire scores and future-oriented mind wandering during tasks.
• Children experiencing more TUTs showed poorer task performance.
• Future-oriented TUTs predominated, similar to adults, but were not affected by task demands.

Conclusions:

• Prospective bias in mind wandering emerges by school age (9–13 years).
• The relationship between mental time travel (MTT) during mind wandering and cognitive resource use differs between children and adults.
• Findings offer insights into the adaptive role of mind wandering in developing children's MTT.