Separating the General and Content-Specific Components of Self-Reported Propensity for Mind-Wandering

Abstract: People differ in the propensity to mind-wander, that is, the tendency to slip into thinking about something else than the task at hand or the happenings in the immediate environment. Research indicates that mind-wandering tends to be associated with negative emotional states and that it declines with increasing age in adulthood. A question arises whether these relationships are true of mind-wandering in general, independently of its content and affective tone, or just particular kinds of off-task thinking. Participants ( N = 218) aged 18–84 years filled out the Task-Unrelated Thoughts Questionnaire (TUTQ), a multidimensional instrument for measuring individual tendencies in mind-wandering, and several scales related to affective functioning. A bifactor model for the TUTQ was employed, encompassing a general factor and three orthogonal specific factors that referred to affectively different modes of off-task thinking. The scores on the general factor decreased with increasing age of the respondents, dispositional positive affect, and satisfaction with life, whereas they increased with increasing negative affect and emotional reactivity. Age and affect-related variables, including individual tendencies in emotion regulation, also predicted, selectively, the specific factors. Although methodologically and theoretically challenging, the bifactor model seems to be a promising tool for representing and exploring individual variability in mind-wandering.