The present study investigated the contribution of dispositional factors in accounting for the perplexing negative relationship between aging and mind-wandering (MW). First, we sought to examine whether experimentally manipulating participants' motivation during a modified Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) would modulate sustained attention performance and MW reports for younger and older adults. Results indicated that a performance-based motivational incentive influenced self-reported motivation and objective measures of sustained attention performance for younger, but not older, adults as compared to a control block. However, the motivation manipulation did not significantly modulate either younger or older adults' MW reports. Second, we tested the unique contributions of conscientiousness, interest, and motivation in predicting state-level, trait-level, and SART MW reports along with a composite measure of all three predictors. The results from a series of mediation and regression analyses indicated (a) that conscientiousness and interest fully accounted for the relationship between age and four different self-reported MW estimates and (b) that self-reported motivation did not account for any unique variance in predicting MW reports above and beyond age. The dispositional factors also accounted for the observed differences in No-Go accuracy but did not fully account for the age differences in the coefficient of variation. Discussion focuses on distinctions between self-report and objective measures of MW and more general implications of considering dispositional factors in cognitive aging research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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性格因素解释了自我报告的走神行为的年龄差异。

本研究调查了性格因素在解释衰老和走神 (MW) 之间令人费解的负相关关系中的作用。首先，我们试图检查在修改后的持续注意响应任务 (SART) 期间通过实验操纵参与者的动机是否会调节年轻人和老年人的持续注意力表现和 MW 报告。结果表明，与对照组相比，基于绩效的动机激励会影响自我报告的动机和对年轻但不是年长的成年人持续注意力表现的客观测量。然而，动机操纵并没有显着调节年轻人或老年人的 MW 报告。其次，我们测试了认真、兴趣、预测州级、特质级和 SART MW 报告的动机以及所有三个预测变量的综合测量。一系列中介和回归分析的结果表明 (a) 责任心和兴趣完全解释了年龄与四个不同的自我报告 MW 估计之间的关系，以及 (b) 自我报告的动机没有解释任何独特的差异预测超过年龄的 MW 报告。性格因素也解释了观察到的 No-Go 准确性差异，但没有完全解释变异系数的年龄差异。讨论的重点是自我报告和客观测量 MW 之间的区别，以及在认知老化研究中考虑性格因素的更普遍意义。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，