Disentangling the Relationship Between Mind Wandering and Symptom Dimensions in a Non-Clinical Sample: ADHD as the Primary Driver
Introduction: Mind wandering has been linked to a wide range of psychiatric conditions, yet most studies have examined these associations in isolation. Given the substantial comorbidity across the psychopathological spectrum, it remains unclear whether specific symptom dimensions uniquely and independently predict mind wandering once their overlap is accounted for. Methods: To address this, we adopted a dimensional approach in a non-clinical sample (N = 384), simultaneously modeling seven symptom dimensions: ADHD, depression, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, schizotypy, autistic traits, hypomania, and eating disorder symptoms. Results: At the bivariate level, mind wandering correlated positively with all symptom dimensions. However, when the substantial shared variance across dimensions was accounted for in both frequentist and Bayesian multivariate regression models, only ADHD symptoms consistently emerged as a unique predictor ({beta} = 0.52; BF > 1000). Hypomania symptoms showed a weak, inconsistent positive association across analyses. All remaining predictors yielded negligible unique contributions, with Bayes factors supporting the null hypothesis. Conclusion: These findings suggest that once overlap between symptom dimensions is accounted for, ADHD symptoms remain the only consistent predictor of trait-level mind wandering. We speculate that previously reported associations between mind wandering and other psychopathological symptom dimensions may largely reflect variance shared across the symptom battery rather than dimension-specific mechanisms.