Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2021 Aug 13;76(7):1264-1271. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa031.
A common finding in the mind-wandering literature is that older adults (OAs) tend to mind-wander less frequently than young adults (YAs). Here, we sought to determine whether this age-related difference in mind-wandering is attributable to age-related differences in motivation.
YAs and OAs completed an attention task during which they responded to thought probes that assessed rates of mind-wandering, and they provided self-reports of task-based motivation before and after completion of the attention task.
Age-related differences in mind-wandering are partially explained by differences in motivation, and motivating YAs via incentive diminishes mind-wandering differences across these groups.
We consider these results in the context of theories on age-related differences in mind wandering, with a specific focus on their relevance to the recently proposed motivational account of such age-related differences.
在思维漫游文献中，一个常见的发现是老年人（OAs）比年轻人（YAs）思维漫游的频率更低。在这里，我们试图确定这种思维漫游的年龄相关差异是否归因于与年龄相关的动机差异。
年轻人和老年人在完成注意力任务时，他们对思维探测做出反应，以评估思维漫游的频率，并在完成注意力任务前后提供与任务相关的动机的自我报告。
思维漫游的年龄相关差异部分归因于动机差异，通过激励来激发年轻人的动机，可以减少这些群体之间的思维漫游差异。
我们在与思维漫游的年龄相关差异相关的理论背景下考虑这些结果，特别关注它们与最近提出的这种年龄相关差异的动机解释的相关性。
