Spontaneous thoughts almost always appear during resting-state. Their content and form depends on external events and context as well as the mood and stable personality traits, due to which they vary on both inter- and intraindividual level. The aim of the master's thesis, was to examine the content and form of thoughts in resting-state based on self-report questionnaires. In addition, we addressed the question to what extent can interpersonal differences in stable personality traits, depressive and anxiety symptoms explain differences in resting-state cognition. 298 participants, aged between 18 and 79, without mood disorders took part in an online study. Participants first completed a few demographic questions and then rested for 5 minutes in a quiet and peaceful room. After rest the participants completed a set of control questions about resting and two adapted questionnaires on the content of cognition. The questionnaires were also validated. Furthermore, participants also completed the questionnaire on the form of resting-state cognition, personality questionnaire and questionaires on depressive and anxiety symptoms. The results indicated that some personality traits, depressive and anxiety symptoms are significantly associated with the content dimensions discontinuity od mind, theory of mind, self, planning, sleepiness and comfort. Significant but weaker were associations with form dimensions of inner speech, inner musical experiences, number experiences and somatosensory awareness. Personality traits explained relatively small proportion of variance in content and form of resting-state cognition, mostly on the dimension of comfort. Depressive and anxiety symptoms have not contributed significantly to the explained variability, most likely due to multicolinearity with neuroticism. We can conclude that resting-state cognition depends on current events, context and circumstances in everyday life, to a higher extent than on stable dispositional characteristics.
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