Mind-wandering, an experience during which our attention is redirected away from an ongoing task or events in the external environment to self-generated thoughts and feelings, occurs in 25-50% of our waking life. Mind-wandering is assumed to play an important role in prospective memory and the anticipation of future goals, events, and expected behavioural outcomes. Beyond association with personality factors such as symptoms of depression, anxiety, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, mind-wandering has been associated with subjective and objective markers of sleep quality, sleep pressure, and chronotype. Chronotype substantially impacts the circadian modulation of cognition, affect and daily activities. Nevertheless, the circadian aspects of spontaneous thoughts remain largely unexplored. Here, we investigated the influence of chronotype and time of day effects on daily fluctuations in the frequency and temporal orientation of mind-wandering. 152 participants (F = 126, age = 21.7) were involved in an experience sampling procedure. Throughout 10 days, participants received 10 notifications a day at random time points, sent through a mobile application. On each sampling occasion, they completed a short questionnaire, answering questions about the occurrence of mind-wandering, temporal orientation, and affective tone of spontaneous thoughts. The final dataset comprised a total of 13001 successfully completed samples. The individual’s chronotype was assessed using the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ). Analysis of variance, generalized and linear mixed models were employed to examine the effects of chronotype and time of day on mind-wandering and its temporal orientations. Morning, intermediate and evening chronotypes did not differ with regard to the overall frequency of mind-wandering. Nevertheless, a pronounced association with time of day was observed, pointing to gradually decreasing mind-wandering frequency over the course of the day regardless of chronotype. Daily dynamics of the temporal orientation of mind-wandering were significantly predicted by chronotype: while the proportion of future-oriented thoughts increased and the proportion of present-oriented thoughts decreased throughout the day in evening chronotypes, the opposite was found for morning chronotypes. These findings suggest that time of day is associated with the frequency of mind-wandering and should be considered both in research settings and everyday life activities. Furthermore, our findings imply that chronotype plays an important role in the temporality of mind-wandering throughout the day and should possibly be considered in settings such as therapies and planning of future events and activities.
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