ABSTRACT

Although task-unrelated thinking (often conceptualised as “mind-wandering”) has been increasingly investigated in recent years, the content and correlates of everyday off-task thought in clinical disorders, particularly anxiety disorders, remain poorly understood. We aimed to address this gap by using ecological momentary assessment to assess off-task and on-task thoughts in adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and demographically matched controls. Findings showed that individuals with SAD more frequently engaged in internally oriented off-task thinking than healthy controls, but not externally oriented off-task thinking. Compared to thoughts focused on the task at hand, adults with SAD rated their internal off-task thoughts as less controllable, more self-focused, and as associated with worse mood than controls. However, when the SAD group was focused on the task at hand, group differences disappeared. Daily findings were paralleled by higher scores in SAD on a trait measure of unintentional, but not intentional, mind-wandering. In sum, the content and mood correlate of internally oriented off-task thoughts depended on the presence of clinical anxiety. In addition, focusing on the task at hand normalised thought content and mood in SAD, highlighting a window for intervention.

摘要

尽管近年来越来越多地研究了与任务无关的思维（通常被概念化为“走神”），但对临床疾病，尤其是焦虑症中日常任务外思维的内容和相关性仍然知之甚少。我们旨在通过使用生态瞬时评估来评估患有社交焦虑症 (SAD) 和人口统计学匹配对照的成年人的任务外和任务中的想法来解决这一差距。研究结果表明，与健康对照组相比，SAD 患者更频繁地进行内部导向的任务外思维，而不是外部导向的任务外思维。与专注于手头任务的想法相比，患有 SAD 的成年人认为他们内部的任务之外的想法更难以控制，更以自我为中心，并且与控制者相比，与更糟糕的情绪相关。然而，当 SAD 小组专注于手头的任务时，小组差异就消失了。每日发现与 SAD 在无意但并非有意走神的特质测量上的较高分数相平行。总而言之，内向的任务外想法的内容和情绪相关性取决于临床焦虑的存在。此外，专注于手头的任务使 SAD 的思维内容和情绪正常化，突出了干预的窗口。