Childhood adversity and mind wandering: the mediating role of cognitive flexibility and habitual tendencies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: Initial evidence proposes that exposure to childhood adversity may induce avoidance or withdrawal behaviour. However, it remains unclear whether childhood adversity results in avoidance from externally directed thinking to both deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering, i.e. intentionally or unintentionally diverting attention from ongoing task to task-independent thoughts. Objective: To assess the associations between childhood adversity, and mind wandering, and to evaluate the mediating roles of cognitive flexibility, and habit tendencies. Methods: A total of 601 Chinese subjects (378 females, M age = 19.37) participated in the current study. The participants completed a series of questionnaires including demographics, childhood maltreatment, cognitive flexibility, habitual tendencies, and mind wandering. Results: Hierarchical regression analyses showed childhood adversity, the control facet of cognitive flexibility, and the automaticity facet of habitual tendencies had significant contributions to deliberate mind wandering (β = 0.10, β = −0.40, and β = 0.06) and spontaneous mind wandering (β = 0.09, β = −0.28, and β = 0.07). Serial mediation analyses revealed that the control and automaticity partially mediated associations between childhood adversity and mind wandering (deliberate mind wandering: 95% CIs = [0.037 0.078], and spontaneous mind wandering: 95% CIs = [0.023, 0.062]). Conclusions: The findings underscore the pivotal role of mediators in delineating the relationship between childhood adversity and mind wandering in everyday life. Interventions geared toward augmenting the control component of cognitive flexibility and regulating the automatic component of habitual tendencies show the potential to ameliorate the propensity of individuals affected by childhood adversity to disengage cognitively from the present moment.