Mind wandering and its relationship with sustained attention and executive functions in preschoolers

Mind wandering (MW) is a phenomenon that has been largely described in adults, during which thoughts do not stay on the current tasks or goals. Considering its negative impact on educational outcomes, measuring and understanding MW in children is essential. MW has been associated with attentional and executive performance in children above 8 years old. Given the huge changes in attention and executive functions organization before 6 years old, our study aimed at exploring how mind wandering interacts with these processes in preschoolers. Sixty children aged 4 to 6 years old were asked to evaluate their mind wandering propensity in the classroom using an adapted daydreaming questionnaire. They were also administered neuropsychological tests and questionnaires evaluating sustained attention, processing speed, cognitive flexibility, inhibition and a selection of individual traits. Preschoolers' self-evaluation strongly correlated with their teacher's evaluation, showing the feasibility of assessing MW in young children. The MW scores also correlated with the children's performance in several tests assessing sustained attention, processing speed, cognitive flexibility and inhibition, as well as some individual traits. A latent variable modeling revealed that MW is best modeled by a latent factor independent from attention, speed and inhibition, but highly correlated with attention. Our results thus reveal the central role of attention in child development, suggesting that mind wandering in preschoolers could be linked to attention immaturity.