Eric S. Andrews

Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a transdiagnostic process implicated in a wide range of psychological disorders. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) provides a valuable approach to capture the temporal dynamics of RNT in daily life, while minimizing retrospective biases and reliance on metacognitive beliefs. However, EMA-based assessments of RNT have not yet been systematically evaluated in large, age-diverse samples, limiting our understanding of their latent structure, construct validity, temporal dynamics, lifespan variation, and associations with mental health. To address these gaps, 4,826 adults aged 18–100 years completed EMA surveys of momentary thoughts and mood via smartphone. Using a split-half approach, multilevel exploratory factor analysis identified a 2-within/1-between factor structure, which was subsequently replicated in an independent confirmatory sample. Across both samples, the within-person factor 1 (WF1)—reflecting momentary thought characterized by more negative content, greater unintentionality, increased task-unrelatedness, heightened attentional focus on thoughts, and greater abstractness—captured an RNT-related dimension of momentary thought. This was evidenced by convergent validity through associations with trait RNT and cross-lagged temporal associations with momentary mood, as well as criterion-related validity through associations with mental health indicators, including general psychological distress, depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Analyses of dynamic parameters further indicated that greater variability and instability in WF1 scores were associated with poorer mental health. Higher age was associated with lower levels of EMA-based RNT-related thought, and RNT-related thought statistically accounted for a portion of the cross-sectional association between age and mental health outcomes. Together, these findings support the psychometric validity of an EMA-based assessment of RNT-related momentary thought and highlight systematic age differences in RNT-related experiences in daily life.

Cognitive aging research has long observed that older adults’ autobiographical memories and future thoughts, as assessed in laboratory contexts, lack spatiotemporal detail compared to young adults. Does this pattern also hold in everyday contexts? Across two studies, we examined characteristics of autobiographical thinking in real-world settings using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Study 1 included an adult lifespan sample (N = 3,847). Study 2 (preregistered) included 217 young and older adults whose autobiographical memories were also assessed with a traditional lab-based interview. Contrary to lab-based findings commonly reported in the literature, older adults across both studies reported more episodic specificity in their everyday autobiographical thoughts than younger adults, as well as shifts toward positive and social focus rather than on the self. Linguistic analyses validated self-report data, revealing greater concreteness and perceptual detail with increasing age. Together, these findings highlight discrepancies between measurement approaches in autobiographical thinking in older age, emphasizing the significance of motivational and contextual factors in its study.

Cognitive aging research has long observed that older adults’ autobiographical memories and future thoughts, as assessed in laboratory contexts, lack spatiotemporal detail compared to young adults. Does this pattern also hold in everyday contexts? Across two studies, we examined characteristics of autobiographical thinking in real-world settings using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Study 1 included an adult lifespan sample (N=3,847). Study 2 (pre-registered; https://osf.io/zv2ax/) included 217 adults whose autobiographical memories were also assessed with a traditional lab-based structured interview. Contrary to lab-based findings commonly reported in the literature, older adults across both studies reported more episodic specificity in their everyday autobiographical thoughts than younger adults, as well as shifts toward positive and social focus rather than on the self. Linguistic analyses validated self-report data, revealing greater concreteness and perceptual detail with increasing age. Together, these findings highlight discrepancies between measurement approaches in autobiographical thinking in older age, emphasizing the significance of motivational and contextual factors in its study.

A broad aim of the precision mental healthcare (PMH) movement is to increase the efficacy of treatment. While showing promise, which factors are influential in predicting positive outcomes is still unclear. One possibility is an individual’s subjective experience – especially when using longitudinal, multidimensional data from naturalistic settings. The Mind Window app was used to gather data about nine thought characteristics from 2,222 participants (ages 18-89). Participants were clustered by their ‘thought-patterns’ via machine learning, and groups were further examined with respect to multiple traits (using Bayesian ANOVA); correlations between thought characteristics; and natural language descriptors. One, PMH-relevant, trait that groups differed on was psychological well-being. Although some groups showed similar well-being, their thought patterns differed in unique ways – implying multiple paths toward a common endpoint. It is proposed that knowledge of these individual differences can help identify personalized needs in mental healthcare and bolster the efficacy of PMH.

Despite an established body of research characterizing how creative individuals explore their external world, relatively little is known about how such individuals navigate their inner mental life, especially in unstructured contexts such as periods of awake rest. Across two studies, the present manuscript tested the hypothesis that creative individuals are more engaged with their idle thoughts and more associative in the dynamic transitions between them. Study 1 captured the real-time conscious experiences of 81 adults as they voiced aloud the content of their mind moment-by-moment across a 10-minute unconstrained baseline period. Higher originality scores on a divergent thinking task were associated with less perceived boredom, more words spoken overall, more freely moving thoughts, and more loosely-associative (as opposed to sharp) transitions during the baseline rest period. In Study 2, across 2,612 participants, those who reported higher self-rated creativity also reported less perceived boredom during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time during which many people experienced unusually extended periods of unstructured free time. Overall, these results suggest a tendency for creative individuals to be more engaged and explorative with their thoughts when task demands are relaxed, raising implications for resting state functional MRI and societal trends to devalue idle time.

Although central to well-being, functional and dysfunctional thoughts arise and unfold over time in ways that remain poorly understood. To shed light on these mechanisms, we adapted a “think aloud” paradigm to quantify the content and dynamics of individuals’ thoughts at rest. Across two studies, external raters hand coded the content of each thought and computed dynamic metrics spanning duration, transition probabilities between affective states, and conceptual similarity over time. Study 1 highlighted the paradigm’s high ecological validity and revealed a narrowing of conceptual scope following more negative content. Study 2 replicated Study 1’s findings and examined individual difference predictors of trait brooding, a maladaptive form of rumination. Across individuals, increased trait brooding was linked to thoughts rated as more negative, past-oriented and self-focused. Longer negative and shorter positive thoughts were also apparent as brooding increased, as well as a tendency to shift away from positive conceptual states, and a stronger narrowing of conceptual scope following negative thoughts. Importantly, content and dynamics explained independent variance, accounting for a third of the variance in brooding. These results uncover a real-time cognitive signature of rumination and highlight the predictive and ecological validity of the think aloud paradigm applied to resting state cognition.