Mind wandering, defined as focusing attention toward task unrelated thoughts, is a common mental state known to impair memory encoding. This phenomenon is closely linked to boredom. Very few studies, however, have tested the potential impact of boredom on memory encoding. Thus, the present study aimed at manipulating mind wandering and boredom during an incidental memory encoding task, to test their differential impact on memory encoding. Thirty-two participants performed a variant of the n-back task in which they had to indicate if the current on-screen object was the same as the previous one (1-back; low working memory load) or the one presented three trials before (3-back; high working memory load). Moreover, thought probes assessing either mind wandering or boredom were randomly presented. Afterward, a surprise recognition task was delivered. Results showed that mind wandering and boredom were highly correlated, and both decreased in the high working memory load condition, while memory performance increased. Although both boredom and mind wandering predicted memory performance taken separately, we found that mind wandering was the only reliable predictor of memory performance when controlling for boredom and working memory load. Model comparisons also revealed that a model with boredom only was outperformed by a model with mind wandering only and a model with both mind wandering and boredom, suggesting that the predictive contribution of boredom in the complete model is minimal. The present results confirm the high correlation between mind wandering and boredom and suggest that the hindering effect of boredom on memory is subordinate to the effect of mind wandering.

走神，定义为将注意力集中在与任务无关的想法上，是一种常见的精神状态，已知会损害记忆编码。这种现象与无聊密切相关。然而，很少有研究测试无聊对记忆编码的潜在影响。因此，本研究旨在在偶然的记忆编码任务中控制走神和无聊，以测试它们对记忆编码的不同影响。32 名参与者执行了 n-back 任务的变体，他们必须指出当前屏幕上的对象与前一个相同（1-back；低工作记忆负载）还是前一个呈现了三个试验（3-back；高工作记忆负载）。此外，随机呈现评估走神或无聊的思想探针。之后，交付了一个惊喜识别任务。结果表明，走神和无聊高度相关，在高工作记忆负荷条件下两者都降低，而记忆性能提高。虽然无聊和走神都分别预测了记忆性能，但我们发现，在控制无聊和工作记忆负荷时，走神是唯一可靠的记忆性能预测指标。模型比较还表明，只有无聊的模型优于只有走神的模型和既有走神又无聊的模型，这表明无聊对完整模型的预测贡献很小。目前的结果证实了走神和无聊之间的高度相关性，并表明无聊对记忆的阻碍作用次于走神的影响。