“Just how distracting daydreams can be depends on where exactly your wandering mind takes you, a new study suggests. The farther away your mind drifts — in time and space — the harder it is to remember what you just did. For instance, daydreams of your childhood home or a vacation on the other side of the world had a more pronounced effect on memory than thoughts of where you just were an hour ago.
However, since the study was conducted in an experimental environment and not the real world (subjects were prompted to daydream), future work should examine whether the same holds true for natural daydreams, the researchers say. Previous studies have shown that daydreams — or off-task thoughts — can hinder our ability to remember thingswe’ve just learned. Peter Delaney of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and his colleagues wanted to know if the content of the daydream could influence this effect.
In the first experiment, 148 college-age students were asked to memorize two lists of words presented on a computer screen. Between learning the first list and the second, students engaged in one of three tasks – reading a passage aloud, thinking about their parent’s home or thinking about the place where they currently live. Afterwards, they were asked to recall as many of the words as they could from both lists. Those who daydreamed about their parent’s home remembered fewer of the words from the first list than those who thought about their own home. On average, it had been several weeks since participants had visited their parents’ home and several hours since they had been in their own home.”
Read more at MSNBC (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
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I am terrible. I daydream all the time :S Always have, but usually not about things that have actually happened or the past. Or sometimes I will just go into a daze while staring at the wall…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………like just now, LOL!
Daydreaming while driving a car past a traffic light, and then wondering what colour it was. Now there’s an adventure.
hah! no wonder i cant remember anything.
OTOH, this is part of how writers work. maybe they ALL have bad memories!
Well, I write children’s stories and daydream all the time, and my memory is hopeless!
Its a little unnerving at times to become so immersed in a day dream that you realise you’ve missed, say – half a lesson, or a whole conversation. Nobody really regrets daydreams though, how can you? Daydreams are like a miniature holiday. Life is so dull, otherwsie
I often day dream driving to work, then arrive and wonderhow on earth I made it in one piece!