{"id":3005972,"date":"2023-12-07T09:21:47","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T14:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=3005972"},"modified":"2023-12-07T09:21:47","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T14:21:47","slug":"older-brains-wander-less-3005972-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/older-brains-wander-less-3005972-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Older people’s minds wander less"},"content":{"rendered":"
Our minds wander less as we age and, when older adults do let their minds drift, they’re more likely to be distracted by pleasant thoughts rather than worries, a study finds.<\/p>\n
Coauthors of the study, published in the Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological 糖心视频s<\/em><\/a> and Social 糖心视频s recruited 175 younger adults aged 18 to 35 and 175 adults over 60 to participate in the study. Subjects were asked to perform a simple online task, such as hitting a spacebar every time the name of an animal appeared on the screen. During the task, subjects periodically saw a prompt asking if they were thinking about the task, their performance, or something off-task. If their mind had strayed<\/a>, they were asked if they were thinking about something negative, positive, or neutral.<\/p>\n Compared with older adults, younger adults were more likely to be thinking about something other than the task, a finding that echoes previous studies. But this was the first study to take a closer look at the emotional content of wandering thoughts. Compared to older adults, younger adults reported more passing thoughts that they perceived as negative. “They might have been thinking, \u2018Wow this is so boring, and I have other things to do today’ or \u2018I have bills I need to pay,'” suggests study leader Matt Welhaf, a postdoctoral researcher in psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.<\/p>\n