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Open research questions in Mind wandering and attention

221 gap statements mined from Mind wandering and attention papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 1,228 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

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What the literature leaves open

  • There may also be several practical implications of our results that warrant further investigation, one of which is certainly their relevance to the field of education.

    Dissociable Effects of Verbalization on Solving Insight and Non-Insight Problems · 2025 · DOI

  • Future research could examine these personality traits to further elucidate why individuals differ so markedly in both performance and response times on figural matrices.

    Log File Times as Indicators of Structured Figural Matrix Processing · 2025 · DOI

  • Future research should investigate the underlying motivations for personal technology use at work and whether the effects observed are specific to smartphones or reflect broader patterns of boundary-crossing behavior.

    Unfinished Tasks and Unsettled Minds: A Diary Study on Personal Smartphone Interruptions, Frustration, and Rumination · 2025 · DOI

  • Third, although the findings suggested activation control and spontaneous thinking as potential intervention targets, it remains to be shown experimentally how big the actual effectiveness of the putative interventions will be.

    The Relationships between Effortful Control, Mind Wandering, and Mobile Phone Addiction Based on Network Analysis · 2024 · DOI

  • Future research is needed in order to further examine measurement models in this group.

    Tuning out: boredom, mind-wandering and flow in classical musicians · 2026 · DOI

  • Although symptoms can be reliably measured along a continuum, it remains unclear how they manifest in the phenomenological characteristics of everyday thinking, as well as which thought characteristics are unique to maladaptive daydreaming versus shared with trait rumination, a transdiagnostic manifestation of maladaptive repetitive thinking that frequently co-occurs with maladaptive daydreaming.

    Beyond rumination: an ecological momentary assessment of daily thinking patterns in maladaptive daydreaming · 2026 · DOI

  • Smartphones have become an integral part of daily life, yet their impact on the attentional and affective system remains uncertain.

    Investigating the Effects of Smartphone Use During Short Breaks on Cognitive Performance and Affective States · 2026 · DOI

  • Boredom is linked to numerous negative psychological conditions, yet remains critically under-researched.

    Levels of Reported Depression, Boredom Salience, and Sexual Boredom as a Function of Length of Time on Antidepressant Medications · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research could explore the extent to which spontaneous mind wandering consists of online related thoughts.

    Spontaneous Mind Wandering and Smartphone Use · 2025 · DOI

  • While theoretical connections between social inequity and boredom have been established, empirical evidence is lacking.

    When Inequity Leads to Boredom: An Experimental Study With University Students · 2024 · DOI

  • Prior research highlights the importance of engagement in reading, but the relationships among goal orientation, boredom, self-efficacy, and reading engagement are not well understood. The study aims to address this gap by examining these relationships in Chinese university students.

    The impact of goal orientation on Chinese university students’ reading engagement: the mediating roles of boredom and self-efficacy · 2026 · DOI

  • Address the digital gap in the use of AI applications between undergraduate and postgraduate students. Address the gender gap (male and female) in the use of AI applications in different learning situations. Adapt and develop AI applications that specifically meet the needs and requirements of humanities disciplines.

    The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Developing Digital Happiness and Reducing Mental Wandering Among Jordanian University Students Based on Cognitive Load Theory · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should examine the causal relationship between reading enjoyment and reading behavior. Future research should also examine the generalizability of the findings to different reading settings and populations.

    Situational enjoyment is associated with gaze behaviour during reading · 2026 · DOI

  • Prior work has not examined how fluctuations in text enjoyment relate to processing in real time. The study addresses this gap by examining how both trait- and state-level reading enjoyment are associated with engagement and eye movements during naturalistic reading.

    Situational enjoyment is associated with gaze behaviour during reading · 2026 · DOI

  • The gap between the highly developed stimulation architectures of digital technologies and the limited human regulation capacities. The lack of understanding of digital overstimulation as a structural problem rather than an individual discipline problem.

    Digital Overstimulation and Inner Autonomy: A Stoic-Psychological Model of Cognitive Stability · 2026 · DOI

  • The dynamic and reciprocal nature of boredom and motivation in L2 classrooms remains underexplored and little is known about how L2 teachers’ perceived boredom (PTB), foreign language learning boredom (FLB), and L2 writing motivation (WM) evolve within and across individuals over time, particularly from a dynamic systems perspective.

    A dynamic bidirectional system of perceived teacher boredom, language learners’ boredom, and L2 writing motivation: a feedback loop system · 2026 · DOI

  • The study identifies a gap in the prevention of police psychosocial risks, which has traditionally focused on overload, stress, and burnout. The study suggests that routine, low cognitive stimulation, limited use of skills, or loss of meaning can also be part of job dissatisfaction.

    Boreout policial: infraestimulació, ús de competències i benestar organitzatiu. Claus per detectar i prevenir un risc psicosocial emergent en les policies locals · 2026 · DOI

  • However, the emotional and motivational mechanisms behind engagement have not been fully explored, especially in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts.

    Self-efficacy and learning engagement in EFL context: A moderated mediation model of enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom · 2026 · DOI

  • The researchers aim to investigate whether a similar automatic state can exist for external attention. The study examines the relationship between meta-awareness, mind-wandering, and the control of attention.

    Meta-awareness, mind-wandering, and the control of automatic external and internal orientations of attention · 2026 · DOI

  • Procrastination is a common phenomenon that can lead to inaction. Most productivity frameworks do not address the underlying motivation architecture failure. Constructing a plausible and credible trigger event is crucial for LMP.

    Last Minute Panic (LMP): A Deliberate Urgency Framework for Overcoming Procrastination · 2026 · DOI

  • Procrastination is often viewed as a time management failure rather than a motivation architecture failure. Most productivity frameworks focus on organisation rather than urgency.

    Last Minute Panic (LMP): A Deliberate Urgency Framework for Overcoming Procrastination · 2026 · DOI

  • Investigating the cortical networks involved in meta-awareness and attention reorientation - Examining the relationship between automatic external and internal attention states in different contexts - Studying the neural mechanisms underlying the external and internal attention…

    Meta-awareness, mind-wandering, and the control of automatic external and internal orientations of attention · 2026 · DOI

  • The present study provided a preliminary phenomenology of the cognitive and affective states of boredom, mindwandering and flow during classical music practice, proving that this hitherto under-studied topic holds exciting avenues for future research.

    Tuning out: boredom, mind-wandering and flow in classical musicians · 2026 · DOI

  • Extensive comparison with other optimization algorithms. Application of SurpriseOpt to more tasks and domains. Further development of the adaptive interpolation technique.

    SurpriseOpt: An Adaptive First-Order Optimizer Driven by Boredom · 2026 · DOI

  • Investigating the effects of digital overstimulation on inner autonomy in different populations. Developing strategies for organisations to promote inner autonomy among employees. Examining the role of Stoic philosophy in promoting cognitive stability in the digital age.

    Digital Overstimulation and Inner Autonomy: A Stoic-Psychological Model of Cognitive Stability · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Mind wandering and attention

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) Future research is needed in order to further examine measurement models in this group (“Tuning out: boredom, mind-wandering and flow in classical musicians”, 2026); (2) Prior research highlights the importance of engagement in reading, but the relationships among goal orientation, boredom, self-efficacy, and reading engagement are not well understood (“The impact of goal orientation on Chinese university students’ reading…”, 2026); (3) Future research should examine the causal relationship between reading enjoyment and reading behavior (“Situational enjoyment is associated with gaze behaviour during reading”, 2026); (4) The lack of understanding of digital overstimulation as a structural problem rather than an individual discipline problem (“Digital Overstimulation and Inner Autonomy: A Stoic-Psychological Model of…”, 2026); (5) The emotional and motivational mechanisms behind engagement have not been fully explored, especially in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts (“Self-efficacy and learning engagement in EFL context: A moderated mediation…”, 2026). 221 gap statements have been mined from Mind wandering and attention papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 1,228 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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